Volume 2 - Chasing the Mockingbird
by Aintzane
Summary: The unexpected addition to Inquisitor Volentia's retinue nearly drives her acolytes nuts as they are close to panic in the beginning of the Black Crusade. Fighting old enemies and bargaining with old acquaintances, she hopes to get closer to the understanding of the sinister mark she's bearing.
1. Episode 1 - Whirlwinds of Danger - Prolo

Volume 2 Episode 1 - Whirlwinds of Danger

Prologue

In the heart of the Palace of Terra, in the old Tower of Hegemon silence reigned ever after the victory that had been too much of a defeat. Lord Mentor passed between rows of control terminals where quiet serfs of the Ten Thousand were browsing unending lists of report files. He avoided the place since the Day. But for the rare guest, he would have preferred to work over his plans in his own quarters. Serfs wrapped their cloaks tighter around their shoulders as he walked by, his chilling null field too powerful to be fully absorbed by his inhibitor.

He entered the shaded room behind the terminal chamber and bowed down to a worn man in shabby armour. Gold flecked through the battered layers of black and grey. The guest could have repaired it but hadn't bothered to do that for reasons unknown to Lord Mentor.

'You seldom visit us, lord.' Every time Constantin Valdor, the former Captain-General, returned to Terra, another calamity would happen. Lord Mentor had felt cold, like on the Day, when the astropaths had reported about his teacher's message in the mailbox for special occasions. Things were going wrong, it was stupid to deny that.

'I've been to Cadia and beyond.' Valdor's voice was calm. Born in a peaceful age Lord Mentor would call naive, he had learned to be still a better soldier than Lord Mentor's peers. The Age of Strife had both forged and broken them. Unlike them, Valdor had had a war to fight and a goal to follow for long millennia. He would overlive them all.

'My agents send me reports on the traitors' advance daily. The self-proclaimed Pirate King has fortified his positions in four sectors around the Cadian sector, mostly focused on blackstone-mining areas of the Botian sector. I have dispatched Periophtalmus and Praecox to do reconnaissance in immediate proximity to Cadia.'

'I know.' Valdor pulled a sad smile and shook his head. 'All I witnessed in that fateful trip millennia ago is coming back. Whirlwinds of danger are racing around us, overwhelming forces of darkness assail,' he recited the last phrases in a poetical manner.

'Words of ancient wisdom?' Lord Mentor valued old lore more than all that bullshit modern thinkers could invent.

'You wouldn't like the lyrics if you knew more about their origin. The master of the Nineteenth liked them though.'

Lord Mentor's mood grew darker than he thought about the main purpose of his visit. 'I have not mentioned that before. Even Valoris's men swore to keep it secret until we met in person. News for the tacit warning. Two survivors we found in the remains of the manifested shrine of Chaos. Our stool pigeon and a tag-along rascal. The most suspicious things were…' he stopped, barely believing the discovery himself, 'their mutation and mark. Both were gone. Have there been any cases in the past?'

For the first time in centuries, Valdor's face moved. 'A sign indeed.'

Lord Mentor clenched his fists and recalled a combat litany to suppress growing paranoia. 'We have examined them. Both ready to be sent back to the battlefields.'

'What about other objects?'

'Two in close proximity to the main theatre of operations. The pirate is our primary object. He is close to completing his mission so we have to stop it by all means. The inquisitor is remarkable in the sense that she was present in the shrine before the storm. I ordered to capture her as she was going out of control but Crinitus decided otherwise.'

'Do whatever you think is right,' said Valdor. 'But there's use for the two foundlings as well. Observe the reaction of the other marked when they encounter their former buddy-in-mishap.'

On leaving, Lord Mentor activated the data screen of his armour and found the contacts of his astropath choir in the list. 'Send that to Lord Crinitus immediately. New instructions to arrive with two special agents. Let the puppets and the puppeteers clash.'


	2. Episode 1 Chapter 1

The months we spent on Calobotrya stayed in my mind years later as it was the farewell to my old life. Even in the war-ridden Imperium on the verge of a Black Crusade there were a few places to take a respite before the last stand. Material signs of the Emperor's mercy.

Nightmares of the shrine were fading away as one sunny day in the countryside came after another. For the first weeks, I woke up screaming every night in my small room under the roof of the old cottage and lay waiting for the dawn in the quiet. I wasn't a fan of cosy home life but our daily routine of walks, garden lunches and hours with books and needlework under the sun let me think about other things than daemon worlds and horrors of the warp.

Soon nightmares had become rare as rainy days in the local summer. The cottage village buzzed with life on the peak of the holiday season. Apples and pears were ripening after redcurrants and gooseberry, roses bloomed as if the summer was to last forever. The Corydoras-Interpunctella family visited us on Midsummer Festival we met in one of the neat towns nearby. When cottage life got too monotonous, we travelled to the southern sea in the owl, visited ancient castles of the capital. Even Fluffster seemed to have abandoned his shady deals, and the family feel of our first ventures in the owl returned to dispel grudges and mistrust.

In the hottest days after midsummer we spent a whole week in a lakeside grove a dozen miles away from the cottages. Sitting on the grass still covered in dew at daybreak, I watched the first sunrays come through the morning mist. Flowering plains spread to the hills on the horizon, birds were singing among green boughs of beeches and rowans. Fluffster went out of the owl and sat next to me, unwrapping his breakfast portion of processed cheese.

'It seems peaceful,' he said. 'I wish it really was.'

'I couldn't believe that for almost a month,' I answered. A frog jumped on a small bump by my hand and didn't move when I touched its green back with my fingertip. 'I checked you all were there every time I woke. After what had happened at the seaside.'

'Not that. The day is too bright for bleak memories. You often recall your childhood in such rare days of rest, as I do the mine.' He lay back to look up at the pink clouds growing peach-orange and golden as the sun was rising. 'I grew up on old Earth, as you know. I still prefer this name to the one people call my homeworld now. Land was expensive there, and citizens built levels upon levels of hives and sold rooms in living blocks around the Palace for the price of a castle on a distant planet. Even the last ocean on Earth was sold away by a corrupted minister. You couldn't imagine a place like this one before the Unification wars and the first decades of the Great Crusade. But there were secret places, told to be guarded and cherished by the Emperor Himself. Some even said He was the one who had created them millennia ago. Twenty-four oases of every biome once present on Earth. There was one almost like this forest. The only one I was allowed to visit.'

'What happened to them when Terra lay in ruins?'

'A miracle or not, they survived the bombings and the wild rampage of traitors. A symbol of rebirth after the worst calamities. A hope that life will overcome death like sprouts growing through cinders after a forest fire.'

But everything has its end. Three months passed quickly as a single day, and chilly winds started blowing from the north-west. Leaves were turning in the garden ablaze with red autumn flowers. Cottage dwellers were heading back to the cities. On cold nights the mark smarted as an old wound.

First snow came early on that year. When we dropped in to a shop by the highway, the always cheerful shopkeeper met us with a sour face. It promises hard times ahead, he frowned at the snow-covered plains. The village was almost empty by now, only a few lonely windows lit up at cold dusk. That's when rest turns to idleness. As if the whole world had forgotten about our existence. Even my crew, people who had always dreamt to live like that, were hushed and brooding.

It was snowing outside. Uncle and Fluffster had left for the city to buy spare parts for the owl systems. Sister and Angel were having a nap in their rooms, and the dark house was almost silent. I sat closer to the fireplace and stirred the embers with a poker. More disturbing news had been coming to my mailbox lately, but I already felt too moody on that evening to open it.

Stitches moved from needle to needle as I went on knitting another sock for the coming frost. But drowse was overcoming me, and soon the unfinished sock slipped to my knees. Falling asleep, I leaned back in my chair gazing at the fire through half-closed eyelids.

A noise from the street startled me. Heavy footsteps crunching on the fresh snow. Uncle and Fluffster should be driving the owl. Strangers, too early for the winter holidays, too late for the warm season. There were rumours about thieves breaking into empty cottages in winter. I found the rosette in my pocket. They would be kinda disappointed to bump into an inquisitor if they decided to try their luck here.

The steps were coming closer. I put the knitting on the tea table and sneaked to the window. Two tall men in hooded cloaks were walking along the street towards our house. They passed by a lamppost, and I realized they were too tall for ordinary men. I froze up, ready to cry out to my friends. The strangers stopped before the gate, and the taller of them pressed on the bell button.

The bell rang softly. I heard Angel stir in his bed upstairs. Another ring.

'Uncle and Fluffster are back!' Angel called out to me.

I typed in a quick message. 'Hush. Strangers. Act on my command.' One more long ring. I walked to the door on tiptoes and grabbed my coat. The laspistol was there, in the middle drawer of the dresser, hidden under a pile of plaids and covers. I stuffed it into a coat pocket and unlocked the door. Ankle-deep in freshly fallen snow, I stole to the gate. After a moment of uneasy consideration, I put the key chip to the lock. The gate slid open.

'We thought we're not welcome here,' said the man who had rung the bell. His voice and tone seemed vaguely familiar. I smiled trying not to give out anxiety when his aura brushed against mine. A psyker. 'Our fluffy friend ain't gonna meet us at all, as I see.'

'Lord Crinitus is currently away. You may warm up at the fireplace.' I led them through the dark garden and pushed the door. They shook snow off their cloaks and came in.

Angel and Sister were quiet, waiting for my further orders. I brought the remains of the stew we had eaten for lunch, the lesser half of a pumpkin pie and a jar of still hot mulled cider.

'Countryside winters. Sounds like staying overnight in a graveyard,' the first guest told his taciturn buddy. He took off his cloak, and I nearly dropped the jar. Impossible. But for the colouring and lack of mutations, I would bet Aphedron the Magnificent had returned from the dead. The guest noticed my surprise but only chuckled.

'Don't tell us you haven't seen a space marine yet. There's one napping upstairs.'

'Sorry, sir. You reminded me of an old acquaintance.'

'Are the magnificent details of my face so easy to forget?' He smiled revealing flawless white teeth.

I flopped down to the nearby chair shaking with nervous laughter. Paranoia had grown into full-fledged madness. Everything is alright. I'll just wake in my room. I must wake.

'What's going on?' Angel shouted. 'If you need help…'

'The stress of our last venture has found me,' I replied, my tongue barely moving in my mouth. 'Just hallucinating. Be a good boy, make an appointment with a shrink. For the next week.'

The other guest stopped next to my chair looking at the fire, his face still hidden under the hood. 'You don't exist,' I hummed. 'A poke, and you'll vanish. Vanish.' I reached out, sure my hand will go through the dark shape of the man. My hand bumped into the wet fabric of his cloak.

'I would do the same if I were you.' The horribly weary voice I could never mistake for another. The voice I had heard in the bleakest of my days and the darkest of my nightmares. The one that had been the beginning of this long journey on my own.

'A weird kind of a joke.'

'If we judge by the circumstances, it's some joke indeed,' said Imudon.

'What does it mean? You're dead. You're both dead. I saw you fighting to death before the altars of Chaos.' I closed my eyes and clenched my fists to get out of the haze to the real world.

'My wife, may she rest in peace, said that unpredictable things happen in our life. On the day the Imperials had landed on our world to bring it to compliance,' Imudon answered. He hadn't sounded that tired even during the promenade among the lupines of the xenos world.

The door creaked behind my back. Uncle greeted me and the guests and went away to the kitchen with packages of goods. He didn't recognize them. Fluffster hung his red robe on a hook and bowed his head.

'It took you long to get here.'

'Fluffster, you scoundrel of a mouse,' I said. 'Why are you absent when you're needed most?'

'I've done all I had to do.' He was calm as if there was nothing wrong.

'I did my best to bury deep all my concerns about your eerie games.' I got up and stared into his beady eyes. 'And then you bring two of my worst sworn enemies to our home.'

'Don't worry. They're working for us now.'

'A bargain they couldn't decline.'

'Not exactly. We pulled them out of the shithole they have maneuvered themselves into.'

On shaky legs I made a few steps towards the stairway. Aphedron winked at me and took a cup with his left hand. A perfectly healthy left hand.

'Fluffster, you've had his tentacles cut off.' Nervous giggle choked me.

'I was already like this when they found me,' Aphedron answered instead. 'Do you really miss them? I suggested you gave it a try while it was possible.'

'Screw you. Both.' I climbed the stairway and crawled into the corner guest room where I couldn't hear the voices from the ground floor. A plaid over my head, I curled up on the sofa, rubbing my eyes so as not to burst into tears. Angel and Sister found me there.

'I have anxiolythic pills,' said Sister. 'Say a prayer, and remember all those visions are either signs of fatigue or temptations sent by the Ruinous Powers.'

I felt reluctant to share the horrid news. Their panic would lead to much worse things. Angel would challenge the two to a duel, and they would kill him. And maybe Uncle. Fluffster would think I'm a nuisance for his games and let the two ravage and kill me and Sister. He was certainly a double agent with connections and cover in the highest echelons but it was impossible to find out which loyalty was true. To himself, all I could suggest.

I took them by the hands. 'Please stay with me. Don't go down. We'll deal with that in the morning.'

I woke up with a feeling that the yesterday madness was but another nightmare. The snowfall had stopped, and a broad stripe of pink sunlight shone through a gap between the curtains. I pulled over a tunic and for a while stood at the window looking at the garden trees sparkling with hoarfrost. Minutes later I ran down the stairs to the smell of fresh coffee.

The table had been already set but my crew was still busy with usual morning stuff. Sounds of running water were coming from both ground floor bathrooms. Uncle was fussing over a giant pan of fried eggs behind the kitchen door. I headed to the kitchen to brew myself some coffee but saw a full cup on the table. Good old Uncle. I took my usual seat and pulled the cup closer. Once I reached for the milk bottle, a shadow fell over the table. A huge stubbly man in a black dressing gown came in, carrying a coffee pot. I froze up with the bottle in my hand.

Imudon put the coffee pot and his own cup on the table and sat down on the other side.

'Your worshipfulness, you've just ridden me of my last hopes that you're but a hallucination.' My hand trembled, and I spilled the milk on the tablecloth. Imudon grabbed a paper towel and slapped it over the wet stain.

'Don't call me like that. Enough prayers and sacrifices to the dark gods and other religious bullshit,' he grunted.

'You used to be such a pious man.'

'And you used to be a Puritan.' In daylight he looked shrunken. Even in the alien lupine fields he had seemed to be more imposing. Strangely, it was even disappointing. My dreaded nemesis was little more than a shabby battered man. He drank a sip and pursed his harsh lips. 'Last time, you talked to me with more enthusiasm.'

'There was forced cooperation but thrilling confrontation. But now you're faking friendship that doesn't suit you at all.'

'Do you think I want that friendship? The only thing I want is to be left alone. I got rid of the First Acolyte's mark but got back to the clutches of my former overseers.'

A sound of steps from the bathroom made me turn my head. Aphedron the Magnificent walked into the room with his usual swagger, smoothing his wet blond hair. His only garment was a towel wrapped around his hips. Purple, of course. He sat down next to me and ran his hand down my back before I could dodge.

'I'll be having breakfast in a sweet company of two babes.'

'No way,' said Imudon. 'The nun is crying in the back room for the whole morning.'

'Weird. I swear I haven't even got near her yet.'

'On the first day she met you in person you were going to defile her and Angel and feed them to the Vulpine Princess.' I threw off his hand.

'You're braver than her. Remember dancing on the bar stand? You were so drunk you tried to hit on your fanged manchild.'

Nostalgy made me smile. The times when our crew had been a real family. Daring swindlery away from big bosses.

Uncle put the pan in the middle of the table. He nodded to me alone and started eating without a single word. One of the doors swung open at a gust of wind from a half-closed window, and I heard Angel's excited voice. He was arguing with Fluffster in the back rooms.

'You didn't have the right to bring in the accursed traitors without Lady Volentia's permission!' He shouted. 'They're dangerous! They should be reported to the closest Inquisition outpost!'

'I say, we are the closest outpost,' Fluffster answered lazily.

'So put them in chains so Lady Volentia could judge them for their sins!'

'He has made His judgment,' Fluffster's voice turned stern. 'He saved them from certain death and cleansed them of taint that was consuming their souls and bodies. Are you so overtaken with hubris to think you're holier than Him?'

Uneasy silence. Sister with tears in her eyes and Angel blushed to the tips of his ears joined us and leaned down to their plates. I chewed my portion as quick as I could and got up. Fluffster waved his paw.

'Don't leave right now. We have plans to discuss. You're definitely willing to get back to work.'

The next few days were kinda hectic. Fluffster spent most of his time tinkering in the owl garage, mostly to hide away when things had got heated. It was already clear he had planned the whole mess since our first weeks here, after he had got messages about the outcome of their operation. I felt relief to learn the nightmarish shrine's anchor to the material world had been destroyed but the miracle still left me puzzled. A hope to remove the mark. A viable proof of the Emperor's existence and care. Maybe Raaf could find other objections, but His power alone had returned pathetic Chaos Spawn to the original fair form. There was a bit of sadness there, of course. Most High Inquisitors aware of the case, especially Puritans, saw it as a sign of things changing. The Times of Ending are already nigh, and He warns us before He comes back to judge us for our sins.

Leaving for the port, I looked for the last time at the dark windows. The snow-covered gate slid close behind us. Soon the last of our footprints will be lost to sight after the night blizzard. Only the lights of the crowded spaceport let me wake from the numbness of the last days. It was life in its full, traders who boasted their dangerous trips at bar stands, fascinated children tugging parents by the hands in excitement for the oncoming journey. The life I lived for. A brief glimpse at my crew's faces was a fly in my ointment. Earlier, I hadn't noticed that, or maybe ignored it, thrilled by the athmosphere. Everyone save Fluffster had grown sour after the end of the long holidays. They walked through the crowd with anxiety on their faces, hands clasped, trying not to look at the two giants marching by Fluffster's side.

The hired ship hadn't arrived yet, and we had a couple hours to munch in the local diner and download the contents of my mailbox in the astropath hall. There was a ton of ads and bureaucratic spam but only one letter that mattered. To my surprise, signed by Corydoras, not Fungata. I didn't miss her tedious quotes but that meant I was already out of the usual order. Not because I was a wanted heretic, Fluffster explained, but because of the gruesome-twosome and their secrecy.

I unwrapped my sandwich and opened the file. A list of coordinates, a few reports in an attachment folder. A case almost like my first ones. Illegal trade on the sector borders. The other folder was a set of fake documents. A rogue trader patent with an emblem of the Interpunctella cartel, a colourful invitation leaflet of a trade fair.

'Tympanella.' I pasted the coordinates to the search field of my map. 'A trading world connected with a few forge-clusters of the Cadian sector with stable routes.'

'Read the reports,' said Fluffster. 'Smuggled relics and even impure trophies from the Cadian frontlines have been found among the goods sold on luxury events by rogue traders. They have agents watching out for moles but many of your colleagues suck at acting subtly. You're less famous than Plodia and don't mind covert action.'

'Hunting for something special?'

'Remember the shady business of Auriglobus? Rumours of the wonderful properties of blackstone had spread far beyond exploration outposts and forge worlds. There's a fellow who's bringing a huge lot of rubble to the fair. Up to you to find the source.'

I clicked on the folder. 'Let me look through the reports.'

'You'll do that on board. As for now, you wanted to buy yarn before embarking. Also I recommend you to choose a suitable outfit for the fair. Our big friends have sent us some funds.'

Another nostalgic memory waited for me on the ship bridge. Old bastard Tamias, aged and shabbier than during our last trip, but still cheerful, greeted me with an ironical bow.

'Our acquaintance has given me problems, m'lady. More attention from the Ordos than even in my best decades of smugglery. I don't mind working for them but the very sight of a rosette gives me chills.' He pulled a grimace of theatrical fear and burst out laughing.

'It's the darkest under the lamp,' I said. 'Don't be surprised if you have to do even riskier things by their orders.'

'I got that when that one-eyed wench dragged you away to her ship. Honestly, was sure you wouldn't survive it.'

'The cursed ship didn't survive it in the end,' I hummed. 'But that's a damn long story. By the way, your blackred buddy kicked the bucket.'

His smile faded. 'Well, thanks.'

'You owe Uncle, not me.'

The trip lasted for a fortnight, and after a mere few days I was ready to jump out of the airlock right to the warp to get away from the spectacle of passive aggression. Aphedron joined the company of Tamias and Uncle right after we had set off, and Angel and Sister were desperately trying to make me stay in our quarters. They whined, repeated constant warnings, stared at me with dramatic sadness every time I picked up my knitting to sit on the bridge, as if I was going to the Eye of Terror in a swimsuit. My usual motivation preaching about the importance of our work stopped working. Fluffster only shrugged his shoulders when I complained to him after a lengthy pious tirade I had been forced to listen to.

'They've been like that all along. Kids who need a mommy. Be one if you took them into your care.'

'There was support,' I objected. 'But they've gone nuts after you forced the two leftovers upon us, not earlier.'

'The two are a minor disturbance in comparison to the bigger threats that vex them. You were too thrilled in the port to see how scared they were when they saw the report about the confirmed beginning of the Black Crusade. When they heard port rumours about the rampage in the agri-clusters of the Cadian sector.'

'The reason to do our best, not to cower.'

'Go and tell them. They need the protection and power of their former orders. Can your owl become a citadel to hold off the Despoiler? Can even your Angel face those who fought in the Great Crusade? You'll have a chance to compare him to the two.'

There was sense in his words, I thought dressing up in my room when the ship was in orbit of Tympanella. A flashy dress and festive makeup cried Hog'n'Shroom from the Casbah adventure. If not for Aphedron's timely initiative, Angel would have let Pimenta run away or scared the whole district into mayhem. I giggled recalling his stunned face and the orchid down the barrel of my gun.

I hurried to the mess room of the living quarters, but found there only Fluffster.

'Sorry for the surprise, Volentia. I dared to make the choice for you. Let the kiddos wait for you here, away from the mess of the big city.'

'I planned to go with Uncle, with Angel as the big goon for emergency cases.'

'Two splendid bodyguards suit such a fancy lady much better. You already witnessed one of them do extremely well in urban conditions. Hurry up, they embarked to the shuttle bay a few minutes ago.'

Aphedron's majestic shape was the first I noticed behind the doors to the bay. He stood leaning on the side of a small cutter, a flask in hand. His natural colouring had been restored by the transformation but his style remained almost the same. But for the towering height, he would have looked like a planetary noble or a trading tycoon in his gold-plated carapace and purple silk of his legion colour. He adjusted the layers of lace on the cleavage of my dress and gave me his hand.

'We were afraid your little ones would make a scandal so as not to let you go with us. Come on, the Reverend doesn't like waiting.'

Imudon greeted me with a somber nod. It was still confusing to see him in ordinary clothing after so many nightmares of the shrine. His suit of unholy armour and backpack torches had given him the creepy air of the Chaos-chosen, but in his current image, he was a seasoned soldier, not an enthralling daemon-binder. I met the gaze of his stern eyes and winked at him to hide embarrassment. He had lost his mystic aura but not his power. With close-cropped hair, in worn fatigues he looked more natural than before.

The vast terminals of the port were buzzing with thousands of brightly dressed rogue traders and their retinue so quirky the mine looked even plain. Stepping with care so as not to tear the hem of my dress, I leaned on Aphedron's arm and headed to the moving stairway to the upper galleries for honorary guests.

A lean woman in gaudy livery of a rogue trader fleet was already waiting under a high arch of the balcony. She made a solemn curtsey on seeing us. I recalled the fake biography Corydoras had provided me with.

'Delighted to meet you, illustrious lady,' she said. 'Master Torrendio has sent me to accompany you to the Old Marketplace. Please button up your coat, it's cold outside.'


	3. Episode 1 Chapter 2

She pushed the outer door. Whirling snow broke in with a cloud of white frosty vapour. I pulled my shawl over to my nose, and soon crystals of crispy ice were glimmering over the lace. Levels upon levels of latticework pedestrian bridges rose to the dark skies ablaze with the purplish glow of city lights outside the terminal. Neon garlands and signs on the slender towers were so bright they shone through the blizzard.

We stood on a landing site a mile over the frozen surface of the world. Colourful shuttles landed and departed from dozens of sites large and narrow down below. Our shuttle was already waiting on the edge. The trade agent opened the door with a polite bow. I took a place at the window, and Imudon's bulky side nearly squeezed me into the wall when he flopped down to the seat next to me.

'My admiration, lady,' the agent chirped. 'Your augmented bodyguards really fit your high position in the cartel. We are honoured to bargain with Lady Interpunctella's partners. She was among the most welcomed clients on the very special market. Unfortunately, she hasn't visited us for so long. Her son paid us a visit a few years ago but declined the exclusive offers.'

Aphedron smirked. The brighter side of Plodia's wonderful reputation. I'd just always break in to the fishiest smuggler dens and present myself as Plodia's friend. The secrecy of her service with the Ordo gave me advantages.

The shuttle was sliding past sparkling tangles of suspended sidewalks and long rows of hotels, shops and restaurants. A small frigid planet with a single continent amid the icy ocean, Tympanella was orbiting its sun in a peaceful region of the warp on the crossroads of many trade routes. Architects of the long gone Dark Age of Technology had used every square metre of land to build this splendid anthill. Even the Old Night had spared the place once frequented not only by humans but by Aeldari corsairs as well as many other xenos races. Its opulence had faded a bit after the Eye had opened, and then with the Black Crusades ravaging the vicinity, but it remained an important part of forge supply lines.

We were rising through the blizzard towards five skyscrapers connected with levels of long galleries. Motley advertisements flashed on their specular walls every few seconds, reflected on the low clouds. The shuttle speeded down as it reached the bottom galleries of the first skyscraper, and we heard vivid cacophony of music from countless nightclubs and bars.

I gave Imudon a nudge. 'Let's drop into a fancy place after the deal, fellows.'

He looked back with a frown. Before he could object, the agent turned towards us, an oily smile on her face. 'Lady, you don't need to spend your money. Master Torrendio will be glad to offer you the finest wines and delicacies on Tympanella.'

'I'd like to have a glimpse of the goods for sale, ma'am,' I addressed the agent. 'I''ll enable file transmission on my slate.'

Her smile got colder. 'Master Torrendio is a renowned trading magnate. He would never humiliate his clients by ready-made lists. Only personal presentation of finest wares without unwanted peepers.' The shuttle stopped, and she pulled back the grimace of fake hospitality. 'Would you prefer to rise right to the private offices or to have a look at the Old Midwinter Faire? A sentimental tradition, brought by the first colonists from their homeworld where they used to celebrate the coldest days of the year because their sun would be going warmer with every day to bring the spring again. There's no spring here but the Old Faire was the first tiny spark of Tympanella's future trading glory.'

'I bet there are curious things to see,' I said nodding to my companions.

Lacework nets of tiny golden lamps weaved over the black in the high windows to keep the frozen darkness at bay. Floating lanterns and delivery drones were hovering over the shiny marble floor, stealing between customers. Under bright tents of brocade and silk sellers offered honeycakes and porcelain jars of jam from nearby agri-worlds, whimsical gadgets and decorations. A lady in a festive dress stopped before a toy stall to buy a velvet stuffed cat for her daughter clutching the embroidered hem of her long sleeve. A young couple took their seats in a shaded cafe pavilion behind large trays of buns and rows of cordial bottles.

Memories made me dizzy but I shook my head and looked back at the marines. I should have warned them so they don't get lost. Or worse, remembering Aphedron's scandalous manners. Imudon was already carrying a sausage he had bought while I was gaping at the fair. He waved his hand at Aphedron who turned aside to taste spicy wines at a stall decorated with wreaths of artificial grapes.

'Just the proper time for drinking.'

'You old prude.' Aphedron winked at the smiling seller girl and held his hand over the terminal, then stuffed a flat flask into the inner pocket of his silken cloak.

'We also celebrated Midwinter on the world where I grew up,' I said, more to myself than to my companions. 'One year, Sister Cellaress took me to the marketplace along with a few other girls to buy sweets for the holiday feast. Poorer and smaller, the fair was as bright and smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg just the same.'

Imudon pursed his lips. 'A feast in a city of plague. It will burn just like the planet of your past, when the Despoiler's fleet breaks through the defences.'

'Not if but when,' I chuckled bitterly. 'Cadia stands, they say.'

Imudon didn't answer. We entered the glass cabin of a big elevator in the middle hall of the gallery. As the elevator was rising, leaving below fountains, garlands and tents, I straightened up and smoothed the pleats of my dress. Not the first time I had to don a mask but I had to bargain flawlessly to win the deal without suspicion. The doors opened, and I followed the agent out to a solemn corridor with walls hung with painted silk. Weird geometrical patterns left me dizzy if I looked aside for too long. Slight psychic disturbance lingered around though I couldn't locate the source.

'Master Torrendio is wealthy indeed,' I said to the agent when we passed by another door with ornamental panels of wrought gold.

'He alone brings the very special goods with greatest risks, lady. It's a sign of real trust to be invited to his quarters. To be among his honoured clients. He has friends in the highest echelons. Nobility, officials, even…' She drew a familiar symbol in the air. The one I had in my working contract and on my rosette. Useful to know.

The last door was the highest and richest of all. Gold-plated gun servitors stood on guard immobile and silent. The agent put her signature ring to a sensor screen on one servitor's chest. The doorleaves slid open. Another psyker's subtle aura brushed against mine. I held my breath for a second, repeating litanies of concentration, and stepped on the gaudy carpet past the agent.

'I'm sorry, lady,' she chirped from behind my back. 'Your bodyguards will have to wait in the side room. Such matters are discussed eye to eye only.'

An obnoxious memory of Lady Melitara in Limax's quarters popped up in my head, and I blinked to chase it away. Two more servitors let me in through the second door. A small, shaded room with an entire wall of lockers in the back. Heavy draperies made it look like a dusty cocoon. Only by my psychic sight I found a curtained window next to the locker rows.

The psychic buzz grew stronger. A gloved hand pulled aside a drapery, and a tall man in flowy, oversized robes appeared before me. A scarf of embroidered brocade covered his neck and the lower half of his face, locks of curly hair dyed purple and blue covered one of his eyes revealing an augmetic lense of cerulean glass in the place of the other. The gull-lover's smug face flickered in my mind. Not tall enough to be a space marine, I thought looking at the trader, but Chaos sorcerers are keen on glamour.

'Delighted to meet you, lady.' He bowed down. His psyker-glance was snooping around my mind as a dog sniffing shop stalls but his tone was courteous and relaxed.

'You're truly renowned as the unrivalled professional in selling rare goods, my lord.' I greeted him with a curtsey trying not to step on the dress ruffles.

'I've been informed you're after a special commodity, recommended by Lady Interpunctella.'

His spies were as good as Fluffster had said. 'Lady Interpunctella suggested I took a look at the display of the newest offers.'

He chuckled. 'It depends on your financial freedom.'

'The least problematic question,' I parried. 'But only if it's worth it.'

'First you praise me, then try to make me feel unsure about the quality of my goods, lady,' he said with mock resentment. The usual hubris of seasoned traders who encounter a rookie. He waved his hand with dozens of whimsical rings with rare gemstones and inset chips. Three lockers opened.

'Let's start with simpler things. A newcomer to the market needs status items. Very fashionable recently, a piece of archeotech that predates even the Crusade era.' He took out a transparent case with a decorated dataslate. 'Show 'em who's the queen out there.'

I shook my head with a sigh. Plodia had provided me with an unlimited credit card for the operation. Still too flashy for my modest garbs and will draw too much suspicion from my peers. Other things followed: Jokaero digital weapons, so practical I was almost ready to buy one, rare parts for vehicle upgrades. Only then he clapped his hands.

'I shouldn't have doubted your intentions, lady. But I hope you realize we're on slippery grounds now. Lady Interpunctella's word is your single warranty of safety.'

More wonders appeared from the maw of the locker wall. My soul nearly shrieked in terror when he took out a possessed warpflame pistol, than a soulstone crystal with baleful fire raging inside. Enough to execute him on the spot. I crossed my arms, struggling to keep the business-like smile on my face.

Finally, he handed me a pouch with antracite-dark shards. Their sharp edges glistened under the lamplight. A wave of psychic trouble rolled over me.

'That,' I said firmly.

'Deal,' he hummed. Too quick. Too eager. 'Ready to pay right now?'

I touched my laspistol hidden in the ruffles. 'I bet you would bargain.'

'Don't need to.'

Searing pain pierced my brain as a white-hot dagger. I reeled backwards. But for the litanies taught by Acrolux, he would have stunned or even killed me. I counterattacked with only a bit of hope to get a second. To grab my pistol. The stronger psyker's second blow slammed me into the lockers. I managed to grip his cloak. Fire. Fire within and without. Hot drops of blood rolled down my cheeks and chin. I reached for the blackstone pouch to concentrate on the resonator.

Suddenly his grip loosened. He staggered and howled. I tugged at the pouch but his bony fingers pinned my wrist to the wall. Another psyker's presence didn't let him attack me with his full power. Noises of skirmish came from behind the door. Torrendio spat out a curse and punched me in the solar plexus with the pouch.

'You promised to help me, shithead!' he yelled to someone out of my sight. A third hand, blue and crooked like a bird's foot, lashed out from under his robes. Before I could parry, it squeezed my throat. Darkness overwhelming me, I tugged at the pistol with my free hand. I pulled the trigger. Again. Again. Acid smoke veiled us both. I struggled on through the haze. The other aura shone bright in the void I was falling into.

Another shot. With numb fingers. In complete blindness. A dazzling flash broke through the dark. My limp body tumbled over. Air rushed into my burning lungs. The room shivered when the doorleaves were blown off the hinges. Bolter shots ripped the smoky.

I leapt up to my feet and bumped into Aphedron. He lowered his weapon and frowned at a large hole in the window drapery torn by a bolt. Pools of smoking liquid marked Torrendio's escape. The stone shards vanished with him.

'A damn mutant.' I rubbed my throat.

Imudon appeared in the doorway, covered in blood and oil from head to toe. 'He's called all his goons and gun servitors to his rooms. More are coming.'

'After him,' I wheezed out a short order. 'While he's nearby.'

Icy wind burst into the room through the ripped curtain. I pulled the coat hood over my head and tore off the charred cloth. My trusty cyber-moth flew out of the pocket and vanished in the night. Steps echoed behind. I turned back, already standing on the windowsill. A bulky abomination of metal and wraithbone marched in, crystal blades mounted on its many limbs. Hidden within its distorted trunk, a tongue of dark flame was rising as its eyeless stare found us. Phosphorous spirals ran over the automaton's surface. Freezing fear struck me. Gripping the pistol in both hands, I sent the laspistol beam to its blazing heart. I missed as my hands trembled. With a cuss I shot again. Despite the smoking holes left by our gunfire, it paced on without hurry, sending out sheer terror.

'Nothing compared to what the Ordo Sinister boasts.' Aphedron clapped his hands. Golden kineblades flickered whirling in mid-air. They swarmed the automaton like frenzied hornets, and the daemon inside its shell screeched in horror. Aphedron's psychic attack made the automaton stagger and step back. 'That's how you like the Big E's loving touch, rusty tin can!' He pulled his old combat grin. 'Folks, let's skedaddle before his goons summon a throng of daemonic seagulls.'

The last word sent chills down my back. 'Even bats are less of a nuisance. Come on. There're shuttles down there.'

'Take the preacher along. I'll deal with this masterpiece of craft.' He saluted with his force blade, pacing to and fro before the recovering automaton like a dancer.

I breathed in and stepped on the outer sill. Lumps of snow fell down to the black void beneath the levels of bridges. A gust of wind hit me in the face. I gripped the ice-covered wall railing with frozen fingers. My heart pounded so hard it felt like the whole world around was shaking. I looked only forward, at the narrow emergency stairway to the upper level with a parking platform. Step by step, whispering litanies, I moved along as the wind was tearing at my garbs, throwing snow into my face.

A dozen steps left till the stairs, terror hit me again. The automaton. My right boot slipped on a frozen runoff. Stunned, I clung to the railing. Within a few inches from the snowy void. Too weak to continue.

Imudon stopped behind me. 'Scared by a piece of ice and a warp-machine? Keep moving. You're an inquisitor, not a pampered spire damsel.' He shoved me in the back. I opened my eyes and stepped forward still holding to the railing with both hands. Imudon walked behind me like it was a garden lane, his balance flawless even without power armour.

Almost mindlessly, I climbed the slippery stairway and exhaled a deep breath on the top.

Auspexes of the shuttle parking beeped when I approached the wicket gate. I put the rosette to the side sensor. Imudon followed me to the frozen tiles. Custom commercial shuttles stood in even rows in a stripe of light falling from the high windows of another trade gallery. Every one marked by an emblem of a merchant dynasty. Probably cost as a few owls. I chose a lean silvery machine familiar from Mechanicus catalogues Fluffster would read. Speedy enough to win the race against Torrendio.

'And if your rosette doesn't work here?' asked Imudon.

'You'll frigging smash the doors. We will do without them just as well.' I held the rosette over the lock. It stayed closed. 'You were right, man. Heretic bastards. Give it a good punch.'

Imudon touched a small green rune in the lower right corner of the sensor screen. Without a word he quickly typed in a few command codes. The door slid up.

'They taught us to deal with machinery in the old times,' he grunted entering the shuttle before me. 'Your peers can only smash things.'

I decided to ignore his sarcasm. 'Enough chattering. Let's pick up Pansexualis.'

'Just don't call him that name.'

While Imudon was starting the engine, I activated a side control panel of the cabin. An inset turret, like on many trader shuttles. I connected the moth signal to the shuttle augurs and ordered the navigation system to trace the shortest route towards the current location of the escaped heretic. A quickly moving point was already a few districts away. For the worse, he chose places of active traffic where it would be hard to catch up with him without bumping into another hot rod.

Things got merrier when Aphedron jumped out of the window right on the roof of our shuttle. He showed his middle finger to the smoking remains of the automaton hanging from the windowsill. In the cabin he pushed Imudon away from the main controls.

'I bet you have never dared to try driving above the limit and without a safety belt,' he said chuckling. 'Everyone fell asleep during your sermons but prayed to every god they knew when I was driving.'

The machine dashed forward with a brisk jolt. I had to grip the back of the pilot's seat to stay on my feet. But then Aphedron sent the shuttle to the left, and I slammed into the control panel. Only when he speeded down in traffic I flopped down to the second seat in front of the turret.

Second by second, minute by minute the green point of our shuttle was overtaking Torrendio as it sneaked between skyscraper towers and long queues of other shuttles, slipped under bridges and galleries. A watcher drone hovering over a big plaza shone red when we drove by, and a notification popped up flickering in the bottom of the screen. Aphedron swiped it down without letting out the controls.

'Let its unlucky owner pay the fine.'

'If local cops get an idea to stop us, the rosette will make 'em shit their pants,' I answered.

'Babe, this is almost a pirate planet. At the start of a Black Crusade. Not your friggin' rosette but two space marines in your shuttle.'

'Right there.' Imudon looked up from the augur screens and slapped on the panel. 'Get ready.'

From the brightly lit trading district the chase brought us to the shaded maw of the city where rows of storage buildings stood among dirty living neighbourhoods and even whole blocks of decrepit abandoned buildings. Fires cast glints through ruined doorways and windows. Sometimes screams or muffled gunfire reached our ears. Places favoured by scoundrels like my late mentor. Cheap rent rooms next to a drug bar and a gang armoury, where it's safer to sleep at daytime or not to sleep at all.

A sudden flash right in front made me shut my eyes. The shuttle ducked. Imudon cussed through gritted teeth. Psychic haze was filling the cabin. My throat spasmed, my eyelids got so heavy I could hardly struggle with the numbness. I recalled one of Acrolux's litanies reaching for the controls with my eyes still closed. The mechanical voice of the navigation system echoed with pain in my aching temples. 'Damage to the left engine.'

I broke through the haze with effort. Torrendio's shuttle was right over us, preparing for the next attack. I leaned to the turret controls. The first salvo was a miss. Aphedron sent the shuttle upwards, and I fired again. A hit on the wing. Then a jet of coloured fire swept over our side, and I pressed the other hand to my mouth and nose. Drops of blood fell on the panel.

'A warpflamer,' said Aphedron. 'It won't help.'

Our shuttle dove into a dark pit of a collapsed living section. Torrendio followed.

'His armour is worse than the ours,' Aphedron went on stealing through the remains of the walls.

'We need him alive,' I reminded.

'So we'll try to cripple his machine and force him to land or eject.'

'Coming.' Imudon pulled a bolt pistol from under his cloak and smashed the window on his side. Glass shards tinkled on the floor, freezing wind swished in. 'Keep firing, girl. We'll get him from both sides.'

'And from the inside.' Aphedron nodded. At his sign the sparkling flock of his kineblades rushed out into the dark through the breach.

When Torrendio's shuttle appeared as a bird of prey ready to strike. Imudon fired his bolter in sync with my turret. Smoke belched out of numerous holes on the hull plating of the shuttle, but Torrendio was driving closer despite the damage. As if he wanted us to smash his vehicle. Unlikely a desire to have himself killed out of belated fear of the Ordo, I thought.

Our own shuttle was now retreating to the fully collapsed inner blocks to lure him deeper into the maze of rubble piles and wall fragments. Then the whole world shivered. A burst of irreal colours nearly blew my head from the inside. When my sight returned, the turret screen was dead black. Last sparks of warp-flame were dying out on the expanding net of cracks over the remaining windshield. Too powerful even for Torrendio's ability. The mysterious 'shithead' finally came to his rescue.

'It served us well.' I looked out at the molten wreck of the turret. 'Take out your grenades if you've got any. Let's play dead and try to ram his shuttle when he comes closer to finish us. But take care. The traitor seems to have a strong witch ally.'

'Even our modern emasculated marine peers hate your kind for messing in with your strategies.' Aphedron leapt up to his feet and slapped Imudon on the shoulder. 'Steer for a while.'

He rushed to the back section with small luggage holds over the passenger seats. I should have guessed that myself. The fortified lids busted apart at a few punches, and three heavy guns fell down to the seats. Aphedron grabbed a plasma gun and aimed at the breach.

'You're from Ordo Hereticus and didn't even look for other armaments than the turret,' Imudon said.

'Usually, pirates prefer carrying their best weapons with themselves,' I snapped watching the spark of psychic fire that kindled in Torrendio's enchanted flamer. 'We'll follow their example when we raise some funds.'

'Sounds too optimistic.'

'You both are the luckiest bastards I know.'

A blast of energy bloomed in the dark as if sunlight suddenly broke through in the middle of the polar night.

'Charge for a single shot,' said Aphedron lowering the gun. 'But enough to make the situation less pathetic for us.'

Fire was spreading over the left engine. The shuttle bumped into a wall section as Torrendio was trying to right it. His psychic concentration faltered, and the growing spark nearly died out.

Before it could quicken again, I grabbed a clumsy lascarbine from the seat. The power packs were out of juice but luckily the owner preferred the standard army pattern. My mentor's goons used to charge them in ovens or even bonfires. I threw the pack on the smouldering surface of the turret panel. Imudon was already firing at the second engine. Torrendio ducked under the remains of a crumbled stairway and turned off the lights but the warp spark betrayed him to the psyker-sight.

The spark blinked. It was already a tiny flamelet under the growing aether wind. A surge reached my mind, and the flamer went ablaze as if someone had splashed gasoline in a fire. Brighter than a sun at noon, blue unlight flooded the whole place. Warp-flame devoured the shuttle whole.

I gasped and looked at Aphedron with disbelief. 'Did they teach you that on Terra?'

He shook his head. 'Friggin' shit. I wish they had done.'

Aether winds blew away the last scream of the dying trader. When the flame died as quick as it lit, a giant cloud of ash scattered all over the collapsed floors.

'His ally is a shithead indeed,' I said. 'He or she probably conspired with the man to sell blackstone, then got rid of him.'

'So what are you gonna do next, Inquisitor?' Imudon put back his bolter and let Aphedron take his place at the controls.

'Find his other customers.'

When our mauled shuttle crawled up from the pit of the ruins past startled hobos who ran to the sounds of fight from the wholer side parts, the owl was hovering over the roofs in the abating blizzard.

Fluffster proved to be more useful than our unlucky team of three. I felt relieved to sit back on my old couch while he was tapping on his portable cogitator. He had spent these hours browsing all network connections of the cartel to find traces of blackstone deals, only to find that late Torrendio had kept the secret records in paper notebooks he always carried with him.

I wiped smudged eyeshadows off my cheeks, hung the coat on a wall hook and sat next to Fluffster. He was studying the latest routes of cartel ships in Imperial space. Strangely, none of them had stopped anywhere near blackstone-mining planets or even worlds that sold Mechanicus goods.

'Have you found anything about the latest deals?' I asked connecting my dataslate to his cogitator.

'A solid list of about three hundred names. This lump of ice has a half-covert Inquisition contingent who is now busy checking them.'

'Did they recover anything of value from the quarters of the cartel?'

'The high-ranking personnel fled once they got the news from their psykers. Our guys stormed the room you were talking in but they had enabled the self-destruction of the lockers. It's useless to question the remaining agents. They were out of the special business.'

'So we must send a signal to the sub-sector capital to watch out for ships that leave Tympanella,' I said.

'Already done.'

I squinted at the marines sitting on Uncle's couch near the fridge. With beer cans in hands, they sprawled like the owl had always been their den. I closed my eyes with a sick feeling in my stomach. Earlier, in the heat of the chase, I'd nearly forgotten they were outsiders. But not here, in the owl.

'They weren't welcome here just a year ago, do they remember that?' I whispered into Fluffster's ear.

'They're not the kind of people to be welcome anywhere at all,' he said. 'The key is to keep in mind their ears are as sharp as their weapons.'

I pulled the friendly smile I resorted to in confusing situations. Aphedron winked at me and saluted with his can. I quickly turned back to the dataslate screen to open the message list.

Reports overwhelmed the mail client. Protocols, conversation logs, trading receipts. I typed in the main keywords. Hundreds of lines mentioning blackstone but in contexts too far from our business. I refreshed the page. Twenty unread messages. In the bottom of the page one letter caught my sight.

There was a single word in the subject line. 'Shard'.


	4. Episode 1 Chapter 3

I clicked on the line. The message opened. Under a few passages of standard cipher I saw a few attachment folders. The text was brief like most news flashes. The agents had managed to detain one of the customers who was stupid enough to boast his purchase in one of the central bars. A newcomer to the trading circles after he had inherited a distant relative's vegetable plantations, the man was more than eager to spend his first incomes on fashionable trinkets.

'He's on the way to becoming a new Spice King,' I said. 'Cucumber Sorcerer-King.'

'The yours have scared him enough to avoid everything even remotely related to the warp in future,' Fluffster grumbled back. 'He bought an archeotech pistol and a small blackstone chip as some rogue traders had ensured him that blackstone brings luck.'

'At least not a heretic this time.' I played the vid-log from the bar where a plump man, barely able to stand on his feet after a bottle of amasec, brandished an ornate pistol before a few other gaudy drunkards. Then he was searching for something in the many pockets of his cloak until he proudly demonstrated a small anthracite shard, tossing and catching it in the air to the applause of his buddies.

The other folder contained picts of the confiscated shard and a summary of the tentative analysis. The agents were going to compare it to the known samples from blackstone mines of the Segmentum. That didn't promise much as most smuggled shards came from beyond the Imperial borders, often taken from xenos or abandoned planets near the Eye.

'We should return to the ship after the bedlam we brought to their Midwinter celebrations,' Fluffster said with a chuckle. 'Half of the trader lords are packing their things to run away from the Inquisition, the other half is getting ready to blow our brains out.'

'Risks are worth taking,' I said. 'The slums are quite a safe place for an undercover outpost and future investigations. You yourself told me it's an advantage to look like an unremarkable citizen, not a pompous inquisitor goon.'

'That's not what we have to do now.'

I gave him a sour look. 'Man, it's not fair at all. You've taken control over my affairs though Inquisitors are to act independently by the Imperial Law. You don't let me do my job.'

'You did it so successfully you nearly got to prison but for the intervention of my friends.'

'Your friends imposed outsiders upon us. Who would kill us one day,' I whispered but looked aside when Imudon gave me a gloomy look. Damn wobbly nerves.

'The Emperor let them live.'

'He won't do the job for me.'

Fluffster sighed. 'All we do is by His will and grace. He pulled you out of the shrine.'

'I told the First Acolyte to bugger off in the end.' My fingers trembled with irritation when I tapped on the page to refresh it. 'Please, enough discussions. At least, until the return to the ship.'

I smiled with relief on seeing the familiar scene in the ship mess-room. Uncle was playing cards with Tamias, two large kegs of beer by their side. They both bowed their heads at me and Fluffster, then Tamias shook hands with both marines. Uncle did the same after a pause.

I sat in an armchair on the other side of their table, next to the snack stand. The last message I'd got was a brief notification that the shard had been sent to the lab. Days if not weeks would pass until they provided the results. I realized Fluffster was right about leaving the planet but he should have let me plan the operation by myself.

To my relief, Imudon and Aphedron retreated to their rooms and didn't show up in the part where my crew was dwelling. Waiting for the case to move on, I spent most of my time in the quite cheerless company of Angel and Sister. Sanguinius and Sororitas saints stared at us from devotional posters the two had stuck to the walls of our little mess. My friends' sad musings repeated every single day so I nearly learned them by heart by the end of the week. They did their best to live on as if the incident on Calobotrya hadn't happened but every talk we started ended with either their old memories or new fears. Arx Angelicum and Black Rage, the Convent of the Healing Spring and the Black Crusade. As if our first adventures had been erased from their memories, they changed the subject once I recalled the Daisy or the trip to the Casbah.

Every morning after breakfast I visited Tamias's astropath with hope that was growing more obnoxious after another sad talk with the two or Uncle. When the long-awaited subject line showed up in the mailbox, I left the psyker pavilion with an old feeling of triumph. Instead of returning to my room, I found a quiet place in the empty part of the ship between the cargo holds and the crew quarters. The ship was close enough to the planet to have access to the Inquisition network, so I entered the password, logged in to the data archive and opened the letter.

'99,99999% similarity to our samples from Forge World Colomesus. See full report in the attachment.' I scratched the back of my head reading the archive article about Colomesus. Though close to the Cadian sector, it had little other specific traits than a few small blackstone quarries and armour factories that provided guns and tank armour for the frontline. The Mechanicus governess of the world, Magos Domina Polyspina, had just sent another annual report to the sector Archmagos as well to the Lord-Militant. The tempos of production were even growing, if the figures were to believe. Polyspina, a scion of Sacred Mars, had been appointed to rule the world to ensure the strictest control over the ammunition supplies for the most vital parts of the defence line.

At a sudden sound of heavy steps I switched off the screen and looked out. A familiar aura made me instinctively press to the wall. Imudon's square shadow fell over my nook.

'Your worshipfulness, I thought you gave up stalking after your incredible flip.' I smiled with effort.

He frowned his eyebrows at me but didn't answer. When he turned the corner, I put the dataslate back to my pocket and got up. Professional paranoia urged me to dive headfirst into the conspiracy competition, and I yielded to the temptation. On tiptoes, trying not to make noise, I headed to the end of the corridor.

The psychic trail led to the deserted living rooms right next to the holds. On many ships, they were used to quarter additional guard squads when carrying expensive cargoes through troubled tides. Tamias was as poor as a churchmouse, so most of the rooms were just dusty closets for rubbish he didn't throw away for some rainy day. I walked between piles of wrinkled cardboard boxes and plastic sacks to the half-closed door of the only lit room on the floor.

It was a small gym furnished by only a few machines. It wasn't intended for space marine training but Imudon was shorter than Angel or Aphedron. When I peeped in, he stepped down from the treadmill and started adjusting the seat of the chest training machine. He raised his head. I nodded amicably. His solitude and defiant independence from Fluffster played into my hands. It was worth leaving my old fear behind.

'A fine hideout, man.'

'You're hiding from your friends, I'm hiding from my past,' he answered after a pause.

'You did just awesome on Tympanella. I have to give your more important tasks in our teamwork.'

'As if I already belong to you,' he grumbled.

I shrugged my shoulders. 'The papers state so. But I've never been a ruthless slaver like bigger bosses. Just the first among the equally valued acolytes. People who work well are always welcome.'

'First you say I'll kill you, then you pretend to befriend me just because you need someone to rat on Crinitus. You're right to be wary of that slippery bloke though. Now let me do my daily training.'

'Well, I think I'll use this place from time to time. The big gym near the bridge is always dirty and packed with sailors. Even when they're not training, they sit on the machines with beer cans and snacks to chat with their buddies.'

I turned on the treadmill. As Imudon was silent, I continued, 'I know all you want is to be left out of Fluffster's plans. If you prove to be loyal, I'll accept your resignation when we get more influence in the Ordo circles.'

'I have to remind you I was commissioned by the Terran team. The opinion of your pompous Lord Platydoras means nothing.'

I went on with even more enthusiasm. 'They'll soon be very busy with the new Black Crusade. Meanwhile you play as a double agent until I give you the cue.'

'Knowing Crinitus, I'm sure he's watching you right now through the eyes of the Machine Spirit.'

'I thought he was my friend,' I admitted.

'You thought I was your enemy and wanted nothing but to sacrifice you out of pure malice,' he said back. 'You should learn more about people if you want to succeed.'

'I'm still kinda uneasy around you, man. So many days of vain hopes to get rid of you forever. But work is worth overcoming old fears.' My heart leapt at these words. Less than a year ago he had cornered me in the lupines of the xenos world.

'You're still afraid, you'd better say that openly.' He finished the exercise and stood up. 'Come here.'

I jumped down from the treadmill on shaky legs but made a few steps forward as if at ease. Under Imudon's stern stare I leaned on the machine and winked at him. He waved his hand at the corner with a rack of training weapons.

'Choose whatever you wish. You've dreamed about the day when you kick my ass for years.'

I touched his aura to probe his thoughts but bumped into his psychic defence. 'Be realistic, your worshipfulness. You'll smash me with a single hit.'

'That's what inquisitors do, struggle against the enemy they're never able to beat alone. Don't be a coward and accept the challenge.'

I grabbed a sword about the size of my own and breathed in, trying to look relaxed. 'Giving up a fine brawl isn't my style. Even if losing, I'll lose with honour. Pick your weapon.'

'Less cocky show-off, inquisitor. Try to hold on for a while when I'm unarmed.'

He stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed as I paced around him in wide circles, waiting for a good moment to strike. His eyes watched my movements though none of his muscles moved. I stopped a few steps away from him, my sword pointed at his primary heart.

'You'll need these skills in the next venture you're planning now,' he said all of a sudden. 'But you're naive if you think the message reached you before Fluffster.'

I attacked when he was finishing the last phrase. The sword hit the air. With prowess astonishing for his shape, Imudon dodged the blow and froze up again. Again and again, I hacked at the emptiness while he didn't even bothered to counterattack.

'The shard is from a loyal world,' I cried back between the strikes. 'Checked it up. The report. Not even like Torquigener.'

'Name?'

'Colomesus.'

'The Panther planned to take it along with a few other blackstone-mining worlds.' He spoke relaxedly, his breath even despite his constant lightning-speed movements. 'Sure it's swarming with his hidden agents. Pray to him they turn out to be the smugglers.'

'I'll write… to Magos Domina…' I gasped at every swing of the sword. My heart throbbed like crazy, blood pounded inside my head. 'To warn her…'

'To give yourself out.' He was now advancing, pushing me back towards the wall. 'She cannot be trusted. You shall not trust anyone among those governors and commanders nowadays.'

'You neither!' I dodged a lazy punch of his fist but staggered when he tripped me. Sweat was running down my back under the tunic. The frustration of past months had returned. Now I was at least armed, unlike then. I swung the sword with both hands. Through the dancing red circles before my eyes I saw the Dark Apostle again. The one who had haunted my nightmares. He should have died in the shrine. My own thought, or a psychic whisper? He should have died. I must fight and win.

I stepped back and hit the wall. 'Attack him now.' A discreet inner voice I could mistake for my own. 'Your Will. Let it become a spear of hatred. Finish him now.' I yelled, unable to contain the overwhelming anger. Burning pain in the midriff. Psychic fire was boiling inside my mind, ready to incinerate the Dark Apostle. For the first time ever.

My back slammed into the wall so hard I opened my mouth breathless. Iron fingers gripped my wrist. The sword slipped out of my fingers.

Imudon pinned me by the throat despite my mad efforts to break free. Like on that night in the grove. In overwhelming fear I kept on kicking him to his sides and legs. He squeezed my neck tighter. Everything went dark. I gave out a feeble wheeze.

'The damn mark,' he snarled. 'After I lost mine, he had no other means to assault me. Did he speak to you?'

I pursed my lips struggling with terror. He relaxed his hold. Air rushed to my lungs, darkness ceded. I stared back at him. All I could do. A pathetic mortal waif who had dared to fight a demigod.

'Lord Mentor wanted to have you killed,' he went on. 'Because of that. You let yourself be consumed by your worst intentions, and my successor is always ready to use it for his goals. To avenge my escape from his jail. What did he tell you? You'd better answer to me than to merciless goons like the old pariah.'

My teeth were chattering, and I could speak out only a few minutes later. 'I thought... It was my own desire. To claim a victory over my old enemy. Over the Dark Apostle you used to be.'

'You fought bravely at first but then crossed the line. I would have choked the life out of you if you used his help for the psychic attack.'

'I'm an Imperial Inquisitor, man. An a person of value for the big dogs if they decided to watch over me. A death sentence for you.'

'As if I really want to live,' he said. 'But they need me more than you. There are more people who are marked just like you, but I'm the one who got rid of the mark. They won't let me go. Giving in to the call of Chaos means to get lost. Lost and damned.'

'Save me, merciful Emperor.'

'So struggle on. Don't let the enemy's voice into your thoughts. I'm not the enemy to fear.'

I leaned on his arm and wiped my forehead. 'Let's go to the bridge.'

At the control panel before the navigation throne Tamias was fervently arguing with Fluffster waving his hands. Fluffster just pointed at the screen with his usual impassive attitude.

'Lady Inquisitor!' Tamias shouted on seeing me. 'Lady Inquisitor! Tell this lump of fur he's gone bonkers!'

'Cool down, cap,' I said. 'I've got news. We set off tomorrow.'

'Hope you don't mean…'

'The shard has been brought from Colomesus. We get there as a trading vessel to investigate the case undercover.'

'So you offer the same mad thing.'

I ran up the stairs to the panel. 'Well, cap, just cool down. What's up there?'

He moved to let me come closer to the screens. 'Look there, m'lady. The sub-sector has been overrun by the Pirate King's fleet. His loyal captains and mercenaries are everywhere. You know I'm wanted in his kingdom.' He turned aside and lowered his voice, 'For breaking my vows. I didn't tell you everything… But I was one of his traders when I conspired with DM. I abandoned his army because the Imperial forces have driven the pirates out of my sub-sector. Now I've got a contract with the Inquisition. Enough for a summary execution.'

'Fluffster, I bet you knew that.' I sighed and poked Fluffster in the side.

'That's why I spent some time hunting for our dear friend. He knows the area and the bastards like no other. There were a few more runaways but your stupid colleagues had already executed them.'

'We all risk our lives, Tamias,' I addressed the captain still red with anger. 'There's no frigging kingdom, only the Imperium you've chosen to protect when you pleaded for accepting you back to the ranks of the faithful.'

'You're young and don't value your life,' Tamias said sadly. 'The route to Colomesus is no doubt blocked by the Black Legion.'

'A great armada is following us,' said Fluffster. 'Lord Mentor himself is going to join the fray to beat the shit out of this stray cat who calls himself king.'

The way to Colomesus took a week longer than planned in the tides troubled by hordes of Chaos troops. For the Emperor's protection, we didn't stumble into legion ships or large daemon packs in the warp but what we saw in the Colomesus system upon the arrival astonished me.

The areas of interplanetary space usually patrolled by squads of guard ships were empty and silent. Only a few of them were anchored in orbit of Colomesus while the surrounding mining worlds and asteroid fields had been abandoned. The only signals we caught were automatic logs from quarry servitors. Where the main cargo port should be, only about half a dozen smuggler ships even smaller than the ours were stationed in orbital docks while cargo lighters were hauling goods to their holds.

'Just static. Crazy.' Tamias tapped his fingers on the augur screen. 'I warned you there's something wrong. Look what my astropaths have caught in the warp.'

The recorded messages were nothing but a cacophony of meaningless mutterings and shrieks, but when I opened the uploaded visual attachment, it was a vague image of a swarm of big ships. Their order of battle looked like a leopard head.

'The Panther will be here very soon. But I don't think we should hurry,' said Fluffster. 'I promised to Lord Mentor that I'll wait for him.'

'You hijack my plans before I start executing them.' I frowned at him. 'Personally I recommend distracting them by a trade offer. Meanwhile I'll land near Polyspina's capital in the smallest capsule. They've taken down most of the defences even before the enemy's arrival. I doubt the governess herself has survived. Like that city where we ran from the bats.'

'I told the astropaths to scan the surface,' said Tamias. 'Most likely a riot or a massive catastrophe. Small groups of people hiding here and there. The workshops almost empty. Shall I send a request to the Cadian Munitorum in your name? To find out about the supply lines.'

'Not yet, cap. I don't want them to pry into our business right now. Drop me in the workshops and try to buy some blackstone.'

'And your colleagues? There's a small mission of Ordo Machinum in Magos Polyspina's citadel. Commanded to oversee the excavations in the system half a year ago.'

'Only if they can be trusted. Sad to admit, there're more extreme Radicals and even traitors in the ranks of the Ordos than before the start of the Black Crusade.'

In the middle of the night by the ship time my capsule was descending through the polluted athmosphere of Colomesus to the unlit husks of factory buildings below. I felt sorry to have left without saying goodbye to my crew but they had gone nuts at the very idea of my undercover operation. Soon they would implore me to take along an army regiment to just go out for a walk. The marines could protect me from unnecessary surprises but their presence would ruin all chances to gather information. Apart from that, I'd better keep the two away from the Panther's spies. Especially Aphedron. Old friendship means more than new unwanted obligations.

Last time I saw a forge world that pathetic was the assault of a traitor marine company. Now, there were no open fights or even big fires on the planet. Just silence. As if the busy anthill had frozen in enchanted slumber. I could have blamed the Necrons but their green lights would be easy to see even from the orbit.

I opened Polyspina's report once again. Signed by her personal code protected from hacking or rewriting. Rows of figures ensuring the factories had even exceeded the plans. I locked the secret folder again and stuffed the dataslate back into the pouch, then checked my laspistol. Marooned from a trading ship after a conflict with the captain. A credible legend for a dark horse.

The capsule hit the rockcrete tiles of a deserted landing strip. I stepped out into the dark. The humid air stank of metal and slag. Gigantic buildings surrounded me like monstrous crags with black crevices of windows. An empty low-level highway led to the heart of the industrial maze where the Fabricatrix-General dwelt in her fortified data-sanctuary.

The Ordo Machinum outpost was located in the eastern wing of the sanctuary, so I headed there, reaching out with my psyker-sight. There were abandoned trailers and trucks before the sealed gates of storage towers, intact construction machinery around unfinished buildings. People and even servitors and automata had vanished.

Finally, three faint soul-lights flickered in the distance among the rows of hangars and garages around the citadel. I put my hand on the pistol hilt and slowed down. When I turned the corner and crossed a vast parking platform, a flashlight beam hit me in the face. I squinted and stopped in the stripe of light, hands in pockets.

A tall elderly man in a factory overall walked out from behind a garage, holding me at gunpoint. He examined my worn coat and patched pants.

'Hands up, in the name of the Free Tech-Republic of Colomesus,' he ordered.

I showed him both hands. 'Don't step on me, man, and we'll be good buddies. I bet you need another gun for your gang.'

'Not gang, girl,' his tone softened. 'A guerrilla squad under the direct command of the Republican Council. Your captain has dumped you?'

'I decided to leave before they blew my head. Gang or guerrilla, it's fine as long as you have cash and food.'

'We need to see you in action before allowing you to join us legally. There're many enemy spies here. Imperials as well as cultists. The Council has sent out many patrol squads to eradicate the last threats to the Republic.'

I smirked. 'There were a few free republics in the slums I grew in. Used to do some fishy jobs for a couple.'

He lowered his gun and pointed at the garage wall. A girl about my age in a torn red habit, with an oil-stained mechandendrite was tinkering with a small van, aided by a youth no older than eighteen in a greasy leather jacket. Ruy put his hand on my shoulder. 'Meet the new seeker of freedom, comrades.'


	5. Episode 1 Chapter 4

I exchanged greetings with the two and took a place in the van behind the driver seat. The back part of the van was packed with ammo crates, two lascarbines lay under a row of loopholes in the armoured rear side.

'We're quite short of rations right now,' said the man. 'Wait until we get to a storage. What's your name?'

'Val,' I recalled the nickname I had used on Torquigener.

'I'm Ruy from the weapon factory, these are Enginseer Takifugu and Panaque, a vagrant just like you.'

'You're easy to accept strangers anyway.'

'Everyone who's ready to build the Republic is welcome here. After you prove yourself, you'll become one of the free folks of Colomesus. Well, you don't look much dangerous against us three.'

I smiled. 'Looks can be deceiving. They don't take weaklings to void crews. The same is true for you. You don't speak like a chav bud.' Even Raaf's chapter indoctrination hadn't erased his slang and manners. The man was dressed like a regular worker but his speech had no distinct traits of either slums or forges.

'I've had my own years in the void beside men of education, when Consul Polyspina sent out exploration teams. So now she appointed me commander of the squad.'

His eager answers gave out more and more curious details. The 'Free Republic' itself cried rebellion but Polyspina's new title nearly made me chuckle. She'd chosen a damn fitting moment to declare independence. But every small blackstone chip threatened to ruin her tech-idyll.

'Chattering too much again, Uncle Ruy.' The Enginseer picked up her tool case from the ground and climbed into the cabin, wiping her greasy hands on her robe.

'I've got to fill the girl in, Takifugu. Don't argue with the commander,' Ruy said amicably.

The boy sat opposite me and pulled the hood of his jacket over his face. His fingers gripped the laspistol on his hip as if enemies were about to tear it away.

I turned towards Uncle Ruy who was checking the lascarbines. 'You haven't finished with the combat tasks.'

'It's all simple, Val. One of the fighting tyrants, the Pirate King, has saboteurs aplenty right around the citadel. We've found and blown up the Inquisition outpost though it took the bigger half of my squad. Now we'll spend a few days hunting for cultists. They've already attacked miners who returned with blackstone for sale.'

I did my best to hide tension as my heart sank. The rosette was well hidden under the coat lining. I only had to thank the Emperor the Mechanicus shunned psykers on their worlds. 'Things have changed radically since my last time here.'

'For the better. For all last months, the Lords of Terra forced us to work day and night for their swashbuckling ventures. To make weapons we could use to defend ourselves instead.'

'Fat insolent thieves.' Takifugu started the engine and slapped on the control panel. 'They continue their mock wars to stock billions on their bank accounts. If the Black Legion overtakes Colomesus, they won't bother to help us. The more victims, the better their propaganda posters!'

The van pulled away from the hangars into the dark. Panaque stretched himself with a sigh and took a flask out of his pocket.

'I heard from our cap the leader of the traitor forces is gonna take Terra for serious this time,' I said.

'Yeah, he wishes,' she answered. 'That's all shadow boxing. They're playing their games of thrones, generations after generations. Consul Polyspina hails from Mars, she knows how things are really going.'

'Sick and tired of this political bullshit, Enginseer.' Ruy patted her shoulder. 'Let's have a rest. We have a whole night of driving ahead.'

'How long till the food storage?' Panaque took off his hood. Despite his nervous movements, his face was smug and smiling.

'Feeling better, boy?' said Ruy. 'Fine. I told you not to climb further.'

'Just a rusty slab,' he pulled a funny grimace of mock bravery. 'I was a top fighter already when I found you. An enemy twice my size tried to smash my head but I survived and hacked him in half with my sword.'

Ruy only chuckled in his gray whiskers. With his kindly wrinkled face, he reminded me of Uncle. Heretics I had seen before had never been that likeable. But for the gull-lover, maybe. Common people I grew up with. Without even traces of Chaos worship. My work demanded me to blow their brains out with a dramatic phrase from Fungata's handbook. For the better, now we had a common enemy to fight.

'The world is really different since I visited it for the first time,' I repeated to keep up the talk.

'Changed in a good way, unlike most worlds of the sector,' said Ruy. 'We're blessed with great leaders, Val. They overthrew the bloodsuckers in a few days. None of the sector bosses have ever noticed.'

'But Magos Polyspina herself was the biggest boss.'

'She's one with the people.' Takifugu turned back towards us. 'She chose to step down from her office. To have the ruling priest scum disassembled to scrap-metal. Though she could turn the Skitarii against us. I joined the others once they started protests in the workshops.'

I shook my head in astonishment. 'So an enginseer who left the ranks of the Omnissiah's servants?'

'Omnissiah is a lie,' she said strictly. 'A lie to hide knowledge from people. We have abolished this superstition. Most of the enginseers got their training from Consul Polyspina so we trust her words.'

'There were hard battles to win. You're lucky to have arrived after we liberated Colomesus,' said Ruy. 'It's all started here. In the weapon factories. After months of grueling work they refused to toil without rest just for food and a few pennies. The foreman of the lasgun shop gave out all the weapons they had made during the last weeks. That's whom we all chose to become our Chairman and Chief Consul. He himself led us against bands of Skitarii sent by the Fabricator Locum. Blood of our people ran down in rivers.'

'Where one fell down, ten appeared instead.' Takifugu clenched her fist. 'I turned off the security systems once the Chief Consul gave me a signal. Consul Polyspina learned about the riots through the augurs but dispatched her own troops to help us.'

'She came to the Council in person and brought us the removed brains of her subordinates,' said Ruy. 'She had always dreamed about independence, since her days on Mars. Most wanted her to die along with the other slavemasters, but in the end of her speech the Council was unanimous in appointing her one of our Consuls. She promised to do the best for our future prosperity. To use her priceless lore for the sake of the Republic.'

The Imperium had to be blamed to make our people way too naive, I thought to myself. To an Inquisitor's eye, their rebellion was but a staged coup. Many tech-priests are ready to jump off the train and go rogue when a sector gets under threat.

'I heard renegade Magi sometimes consort with traitors or daemons,' I replied.

'Girl, you've left the brainwashing Imperium,' Takifugu snapped back. 'Get this stupid propaganda out of your head. They brand as traitor anyone who refuses to believe in their nonsense. Daemons are just a superstition, everyone knows that. Just some poorly studied phenomenon the Machine Cult forbids to investigate for real.'

One kind of indoctrination just replaced with another. Polyspina had outsmarted all her peers and climbed to unrivalled power. As a grey cardinal, to blame worker leaders in case of bad luck. Fluffster totally needed a date with this jaded politician.

Panaque's head drooped to his shoulder again. Ruy offered him his own flask but the boy only muttered something with his eyes closed.

'A brave lad,' said Ruy. 'Takifugu, speed up. There must be drugstore stuff in the warehouse.'

'The bastards from the Ordo killed our medic,' Takifugu said to me. 'Do you have any doctor skills?'

'If handing out the medicine box and telling to hold on counts,' I answered with a wry smile.

'Very funny. The worst plague of the Republic is the lack of human resources.'

'The overly serious attitude is what creeps me out in the Mechanicus.'

She clenched her jaws. 'Our people are dying. Both tyrants are ready to smash us. Maybe you have other friends aboard your ship who might join us. Help us to get free, and we'll gladly join you to liberate your crew. Your home planet.'

'I told you enough preaching,' Ruy raised his voice staring at the angered enginseer. 'Watch out for the cultists. Their lair is somewhere nearby.'

Hours passed in silence. Ruy and Panaque were napping on their seats with guns in hands. Panaque gasped in his sleep from time to time swaying left and right when the van swerved between factory buildings. Takifugu's mechandendrite stayed connected to the poorly working augur system as she was browsing the non-stop tracking reports.

The van entered a densely built district of living blocks. Even squares of enclosed yards were connected by galleries and sidestreets. We passed by a few broken doors with faded slogans written over the metal and rockcrete. Every fourth yard had a small shop but most were unlit and empty, a few burnt almost to the ground. Finally, Takifugu stopped the van before a battered door with a code lock.

'Late dinner, folks.' She kicked the door open and reached for the lock sensor with her mechadendrite. Lights turned on inside when the door slid up. I saw a vast hall with endless rows of shelves where crates and containers of all shapes and sizes were stored in neat piles under flickering control panels. In the back part of the warehouse there was a giant fridge the size of the whole wall, every locker out of thousands marked with a green or red lamp.

Panaque jerked up his head once he heard about dinner. He rubbed his eyes with a content smile as if nothing had disturbed him before. As if he was a student on a vacation trip.

When the three jumped out of the van, I hurried after them, my hand on my collar with the cyber-moth. But for the enginseer's presence, I'd have let it out once we had set off.

Takifugu was rummaging through the boxes muttering to herself. Finally, she waved her hand. Colourful square boxes fell out of a rickety crate and scattered over the rockcrete floor. I leaned down to pick them up along with the others. Standard ration packs with the sign of the Mechanicus.

'Sorry, no halt today.' Takifugu pressed on the flickering sensor on her belt. 'The augurs have located their camp.'

'Will not be the first lunch on the run,' said Ruy. 'Fork in one hand, shooting with the other.'

Panaque cut the edge of the box wrapping and giggled. Ruy nodded at him. 'You'll need these snacks, boy, to kick butt in no time.'

'Or the cultists snack on you.' I couldn't help smiling.

'I'm not that tasty.' He smiled back chewing on a piece of chocolate.

'Boy, run to the back end shelves for some amasec.' Takifugu lit up a row of lockers with a laser pointer. 'The codes are already in your slate. Need to feed our metal friend's engine.

Ten minutes passed, but Panaque was still fussing with the lockers. Ruy shook his head and threw the smoking butt of his cigarette to the floor. 'Val, call him up before he gulps our stocks of booze alone.'

I walked to the shaded rows of shelves on tiptoes. The boy had hidden under a few broken lamps, as if intentionally. They should have probably found out if he was a cultist, I told to myself but touched the laspistol turning the corner.

A battery of small plastic bottles separated me from Panaque who was scratching something into the wall paint with a penknife. He froze staring at me nervously when I stopped before the bottle hedge. The unfinished drawing was no Star of Chaos or any other blasphemous emblem. Two heads of the Imperial Aquila over the only spread wing. He had just drawn a thin outline of the other.

'We're leaving,' I said.

He bit his lip and added a few lines to the wing. He wasn't afraid of me but didn't want to show the emblem to the others. When the wing was ready, he spun the knife in his fingers, struggling with some unknown doubt. Not looking at me, he quickly drew the Inquisition symbol in the air. Chill ran down my back. A provocateur. They were expecting an operative to hunt them down after they'd attacked the Inquisition outpost. I shrugged my shoulders with the most innocent look.

Panaque sighed and stuffed the knife into his pocket. 'Please take a few bottles. Too many to carry in my arms.' I tried not to show any confusion before Ruy and Takifugu but they didn't seem to care at all.

Already in the van, I tore the plastic cover off a small container with meat stew. When I picked up the first morsel with a plastic fork, the van jumped on a bump. Sauce splattered over my scarf.

Takifugu spat out a cuss. 'Damn cultists. Their stupid mines have ruined the highway. The bright side, they've blown more of their own men than the ours.' With a smirk she pointed to the right. The van rode past a pile of messy corpse parts scattered around the remains of an ammo crate. An almost intact makeshift helmet marked with a star of Chaos lay on top of a burnt truck. Takifugu shot it off with her mechadendrite gun.

I unwrapped my scarf and took a wet wipe from the ration pack. Ruy chuckled looking at me. 'Foolish superstition, girl.'

My aquila pendant had slipped out from under the collar. I stuffed it back to the sniggering of Ruy and Takifugu. 'Well, when in the void, you have to believe just to stay sane in the middle of hell.'

'Silly to think an enthroned corpse-ruler made up by greedy priests will help you,' said Takifugu. 'Consul Polyspina has been to Terra. She said there's no palace or golden throne there. The Emperor was nothing but a legend. Invented to make people afraid. All the High Lords have is a piece of archeotech they use for navigation. When we take over the galaxy, we'll build such Astronomicans in all parts of human space. The ruling priests of the Mechanicus are hiding the patterns from us. Just to support the stupid cult.'

Busy with the greasy stains, I preferred silence to risky arguments. I squinted at Panaque who was smiling along with the others but kept his opinion to himself. To stay in the safe range, we'd better discuss something else. Something more important to the case.

'Will be easier to wage war on the tyrants with some cash in your pockets, folks. My cap isn't the only one to buy blackstone from you. I heard, gangs get crazy to buy a single chip. The Ordos are running around like mad.'

'Our chance,' said Ruy. 'The Council has fortified the blackstone workshop and provided extra Skitarii guards for the quarries. Our reserves are small but those greedy bastards pay fortunes. Soon we're launching the workshop machinery again. We'll craft our own pylons to keep both the Imperium and the Despoiler at bay.'

'A Blackstone Fortress,' Takifugu argued. 'Heard about these great ships? A single shot will blow an Imperial battle barge like a rotten egg. Consul Polyspina has comrades on Mars. They'll start the resistance in the heart of the tyranny. Humanity is to return to the majestic Age of Technology obscurantists call the Dark Age. Free people among the stars.'

'A young dreamer you are. People want to live in peace, without all your pompous stupid projects. To build their homes, to work for themselves. I have children to care for. Grandchildren to raise. They've seen but this pointless war and worthless efforts.'

Takifugu frowned and pursed her lips. 'We're all suffering because of this lack of solidarity. Only endeavour and technology can bring prosperity to the galaxy. To stay safe and sound. Otherwise, the Imperium will enslave us again.'

I swallowed the last piece of meat. 'Political matters give me indigestion. Knotty stuff for those with brains in their heads.'

'You must have some as well,' said Panaque. 'But you'd better not have the chance to see them firsthand.'

'You'll both see your brains and guts if you don't shut up and grab your weapons,' Ruy bellowed, autogun in hands. 'The cultist lair is two miles away.'

Panaque leapt to his feet and hurried to the lascarbines. He opened one of the crates and pulled out a grenade launcher.

'Y'all know what to do.' Ruy leaned over to study the data on Takifugu's control panel. 'They're in an abandoned underground workshop annex. A few frag and krak grenades down there. When the remaining nutties run out, non-stop fire.'

Psychic noise within earshot was a better warning than the dots on the cracked display. A slight buzz in the head grew into dull pain as we drove into the factory district past burnt barricades of scrap-metal and rubble. A bloodied corpse in rags hung from the railings of a workshop building, red drops falling one by one on a Chaos star drawn on the pavement. Panaque folded his hands on his chest, and this time no one dared to mock him.

I clasped my hands on the laspistol and closed my eyes. Blackstone reserves could be used as psychic lenses even by a psyker as weak as me. Their background aura wrapped the whole world in glowing mist. First it dimmed my senses, and I found myself drowning in its shimmering depth, struggling only to sink deeper. I repeated litanies and prayers again and again in fruitless search for familiar soulfires.

Finally, a piercing beam of unlight struck me. Hungry daemonic essence stirred in the haze. Then the veil parted. Dark fire kindled inside a soulstone crystal that floated in the center of a dark dusty room. The place stank of death and taint. Two dozens of stray souls united in a psychic choir were howling blasphemous canticles, calling out in both ecstasy and despair. As the sound of unwords was growing louder, glyphs appeared where the dark fire cast its shadow-light. Runes weaved into elaborate spirals and whorls.

'Great lords chosen by the gods!' a hysterical voice squealed from the murk. 'Great lords, we beg you to set foot on this planet. We beg you to bring their blessing to those blind to their majesty!'

The unfire's furious blaze flooded the warp. I opened my eyes back in the van panting. Ruy's voice reached my still deafened ears. 'Bullshit. She's just fainted from the gravity. Often happens to void-born.'

'I've seen psyker trance before,' Takifugu answered.

'You mean she's a witch? Nice surprise.'

'Man, you've just mocked me for believing in superstitions,' I wheezed out. 'Witches of your imagination exist in creepy tales only.'

'What the heck was that at all?' Ruy glared at me from the other end of the van.

'Well, it would be stupid to stay undercover. I'm a psyker. An illegal psyker employed for that mostly. Just a natural phenomenon your tech-priests are gonna study after the victory of the Republic.'

'You can burn us alive with a single thought.'

'I'd have worked for big dogs with big cash if I was that strong,' I said. 'All I do is sniffing around. And I have something to tell you.'

He frowned with mistrust. 'For the sake of the Republic. Come on.'

I turned away from Panaque's curious stare and went on as if it was a briefing for my crew. 'There are more than twenty cultists in the underground ritual hall. I caught them summoning some nasty guys to the surface. Some chosen of the Chaos gods.'

'Gods don't exist,' said Takifugu.

'Have mercy for the poor scum who haven't got a proper education. They cannot even repeat something like Immaterium gestalt conglomerations of… well, some emotional bullshit. That's how our own enginseer explained that, but he's that sour kind of a drinking guy.'

'The Chairman warned us about the Pirate King's fleet,' said Ruy. 'There's a witch-man in the Council who's watching out for any ships that go out of the warp.'

A good reason to avoid the Council for as long as possible. But I hoped the man could be dealt with. A renegade astropath from a trading ship, for sure.

The van shivered. Gunfire echoed in the artificial canyon of hab-blocks. A hail of autogun slugs came bamming on the van armour. Takifugu connected to the auspexes again and pulled down the windshield cover. Hand on lascarbine trigger, I reached out with my psyker-sight.

A throng of blood-smeared cultists rushed out of the unlit blocks. I couldn't see enemy gunners but felt their traces on the upper floors. Panaque and I fired at once, Ruy joined in with his heavy hellgun. The attacking ranks mixed. Cultists tripped on the bodies of their fallen but hacked their way to the van. In blind fury they clashed with one another. Blood splattered over the dead and dying, and the cultists held out their hands, smeared the gore over their faces and armour.

'They're getting rid of the craziest in their gangs,' I said.

Ruy flinched in disgust. 'We battled a shit-worshipping gang in the sewers a week ago. They ran out covered in thick carapaces of dried crap. Literal human waste. Does one need to be nutty to join them? Or that's their stupid worship that makes 'em go bonkers?'

'Both. Been to quite a lot of skirmishes against their kind. You'd better mind their ringleaders hiding inside.'

I didn't wait for his answer. A soulfire, overcast by the same daemonic shadow, flickered in the upper passages for a mere second. Got you. I sent the lascarbine beam to the closest broken window. Panaque followed without any order. The only skilled fighter among the three, though the youngest of them.

One of the autoguns went dead. A few remaining cultists hammered on the van walls with rebar clubs and cleavers. The next autogun salvo mowed down two at once, but the others ignored the friendly fire.

Every death was a dash of fuel to the abnormal psychic glow from the basement. A blaze painful to come close in realspace, let alone glimpse with psyker-sight. I bet the Panther's whole fleet saw it. Pulsating in a peculiar pattern, it sent out voiceless calls through the warp.

The last cultist staggered and slid down the blood-smeared van armour, still gripping the club hilt chained to his wrist. Enemy gunfire died out all of a sudden. Silence fell over. That kind of silence before a seastorm pounces on the coast.

Ruy leaned back, his shoulders drooped. 'Can't breathe,' he whispered. 'Like a concrete slab on the chest.'

'Evil sorcery you don't believe in.' I picked up the flask of brandy that slipped out of his hand. 'I'm taking Panaque out to take a sneak peek. Do you have anything better than my flashlight?'

Takifugu answered instead. 'If you blow up their lair, count yourself in. But if you decide to cheat on us, you won't make it out alive.' The red dot of her laser pointer slipped across the crates and stopped on the rightmost. 'There's a pretty new hellpistol there. Low on charge, use sparingly.'

Panaque didn't need a special invitation. He jumped out of the van eagerly, as if he had been waiting to get away from the two. Taking cover behind corners and annexes after every few steps, we approached the haunted building. The dark glow oozed through the abandoned husk, a captivating beacon invisible to the naked eye. A lamp for soul-moths to burn in its unnatural blaze. Rustling voices whispered to me, too far away to hear. When we sneaked between the pillars of a collapsed gallery arch, words broke through the distant cackling.

'Pitiful corpse-lackeys… Come closer… If you dare…'

I nodded to Panaque and stepped forward, ready to shoot at the slightest move. The realspace remained as silent as before. They were probably dying or already dead in their unlit basement. Panaque slipped on spilled blood and bumped into an overturned garbage can. The eerie silence swallowed to echo.

'Great warriors… In black and gold… Sent by the beast-king of the void… To feast on your bodies and souls…'

'Do you hear that?' Panaque whispered. 'It seems to come from the inside of my head.'

'Psykers.'

'I've heard and read about that but this is the first time…'

I put my finger to my lips, then pointed at a small ground-level window barricaded with scrap-metal. 'There.'

A gut-wrenching stench of burning flesh hit my nose. Not a single glint of fire within. I dropped to one knee behind the closest wall and aimed at the window.

'Let me throw in a few grenades,' said Panaque.

'The rubbish is probably mined.' My first shot pierced a few metal crates on the edge of the barricade. Empty.

After a few more shots I got up. A tad of risk is still a better idea than slipping into madness at the horrible call. I kicked one of the remaining metal plates. Nothing happened.

Panaque put his foot down on the inner windowsill. His flashlight caught a dark shape underneath. With an angry cry he tore one grenade off his belt. The flashlight blinked and went out. A bout of vertigo knocked me down, and I slipped down through the window, grates avoiding my numb fingers.

We were rolling down, deafened by the crazy psychic yells and roars from underneath. Closer to the dark fire. To the greedy maw. Finally, I slammed into a half-opened door and grabbed the edge with both hands. For a few seconds, we both lay face down on the floor listening to the silence.

I felt hostile presence. Without a sound, it came closer. Horrible stench filled the hall. I pulled the trigger. Then again, with my eyes closed.

'Foul mutant!' Panaque shouted. Dazzling flashes of our joint fire lit up the abomination's grotesque shape. Four-handed, with the head of a predator beast, it licked its fangs and reached for us. It loomed over us, barring us from the exit. Laser beams left charred stains on its hairless pallid hide but it ignored the wounds and only moved forward to push us towards the warp-fire.

I got up holding to the door and fired the pistol at the other end of the passage. We both gasped. The corridor had collapsed a few steps away. The chasm, big enough for an Imperial Knight to fall through, revealed another unlit hall. Where the warp-taint was oozing from. Before I could fire again to have another glimpse, reddish glow from below lit the passage. The mutant swung all four limbs.

'A genestealer,' Panaque whispered. 'No, dear Emperor.'

'We have grenades.' I ducked and rolled to the wall as the monster's claws slashed my carapace. 'Would you rather blow up or fall down to your death?'

'Wait.' He pulled a small box out of his pocket and put it on the barrel of the pistol. 'Grappling hook. But there… Daemons.'

'Let's solve the problems as they arise.'

He kicked away the other clawed limb and jumped towards the edge of the chasm. The grapnel swished in the air and caught on the bent railing. With the other hand, he grabbed the grenade, pulled the pin with his teeth, then hurled it to the exit above. I whispered the Death Incantation. Holding hands, we plummeted into the red haze.


	6. Episode 1 Chapter 5

The fall stopped in mid-air. We hung two meters above the floor on the taut cord. The mutant's claws screeched on the railing over our heads.

'Just like all those stupid melodramas about romantic suicides,' I grunted.

Even in the red glow I saw his cheeks blush. 'Sorry, ma'am. The grenade…'

He hadn't finished the phrase. A booming blast shook the ceiling. Rubble and blood rained on us. The railing cracked.

I bumped into something soft and rolled to my side. My hand got into a pool of sticky goo. A psychic surge hit my mind, and everything went dark for a few seconds. Catching for air, I sat up and shook my palm. Panaque curled up unconscious on the dirty floor. When I shook him, he tried to get up but flopped back with a groan.

'My… leg.'

'Hold on, boy.' I found my laspistol and leapt to my feet. Taint and death all around. The crystal was floating over the center of a spiral maze carved into the metal of the floor. Eight dead cultists lay around the spiral like the rays of the Chaos Star, their veins slit, their blood running through the canals of the maze. One of them had been my involuntary life-saviour. I wiped his dark blood on the column, trying to hold my breath at the sickening reek.

When I stepped over his body to help Panaque, the cultist's eyes suddenly opened. Scarlet fire flashed in the pupils, the lower jaw trembled. I took aim. A husky voice came from the stiff lips as if some malignant sentience spoke to me through the dead body.

'You have minutes left. They are coming.'

'Who and when?' I asked, concentrating on the question with the Will.

The lips twisted into a crooked grin. 'Stupid mortal. As if it means anything. The King's men. The last cry of our souls calls them to this pathetic junkyard. Six minutes left. A single squad will be enough to send you to the gods.'

The scarlet fire went out. The cultist lay quiet and breathless. 'What a talkative dead man, isn't he?' I gave my hand to Panaque. 'How're you? There's brandy left in my flask.'

The pulse of the crystal got feverish. A cry loud enough to be heard from the other side of the galaxy. Rubbing my forehead, I activated my vox bead. After a few beeps it found the channel.

'Ruy, Takifugu, do you cope? To put it short, we have five minutes until a drop pod with a bunch of Chaos Marines hits the ground.'

A cough from the other side. Then Takifugu's sour voice answered, 'We're in the yard, near the entrance. Get out.'

'Well, we've kinda fallen through a big hole in the floor. Panaque's got his leg injured. You're an Enginseer. Tell me the keys to the defense turrets.'

'It's for the Mechanicus only,' she said after a pause.

'Don't be a fool. For the damn Republic. Four damn minutes.'

She cleared her throat. 'Fine. Send Panaque to the closest intact control panel and connect with your dataslate. I'll dictate it in the binary.'

I turned on the voice input menu. Panaque limped to the row of screens on the opposite wall. All but two had been smashed, the remaining ones had dark holes over about a third of their surface. Panaque tapped on both but the lock screen didn't give in.

'Biometric systems.' He bit his lip.

I sighed. 'Don't tell them or I'll shoot your head off.' At the touch of the rosette the screen lit up, and the main menu appeared in the lower left corner.

'I've guessed…' Panaque started with a cheerful smile I hadn't expected.

'Later, boy.'

Panaque opened the sub-menu of connections and transmissions. Lines of ones and zeroes ran across the empty text field as Takifugu's monotonous voice started dictating. Two minutes and a half. Two minutes.

'Done.' Her voice sounded from the chasm above. 'Send it to the controls directly. The turrets will auto-lock on the target. Get out before this glowing rubbish eats you.'

She leaned over with the end of a metal cord in her hands. I pressed on the 'send' button and gave Panaque a nudge. He grabbed the loop on the end and soared to the ceiling as the cord retracted. I was almost sure they'd leave me down here but Takifugu threw me the cord once Panaque was up.

'To the van. I took the sample of the genestealer blood for our Biologis adept to analyze.'

We crawled out through the half-buried entrance to the fresh air. The tension in the warp exploded with such terrific power I saw stars. An impassive mechanical voice spoke from the underneath, 'Turret locked on.'

A shooting star flashed between the clouds. We ducked behind a pile of rubbish, trying not to move. For a moment the yard lit up as bright as day, then the ground shook at the tremendous impact. A burning drop pod was towering over our shelter. Armoured fists pounded on the jammed doors from the inside. Dragging our wounded buddy, we darted towards the van.

'Bombing?' Ruy lay on the van floor at the loophole, hand on the lascarbine butt.

'Worse.' I knelt next to him and took aim. Takifugu revved off so boxes went tumbling down from the upper shelves. Through the scope I saw giants in black armour run around the corner. Their leader nodded his horned helmet, and bolter shots flashed one by one in the dark. The van shivered, Takifugu made a hard right. I slammed into the wall clutching the carbine. Ruy was firing non-stop, without a slightest hope to do them any harm.

'I've reported to the Consuls,' Takifugu said puffing. 'The assault has begun. The first marines to have landed. We have to get to the fortress. Quicker.'

'What about fuel?' said Ruy.

'Tight. But we might fill up if there are no other marines on the way.'

I put the cold gun butt to the bump on my forehead. The first summoning had happened right after we'd landed. Not willing to suspect Fluffster, but still there was someone watching us. The boy was aware about my job, I recalled. Tamias was afraid of the Panther so that he would pay any price to save his wretched life.

On the way back we didn't stop for a single time. I had hoped to sneak away during refueling or filling food stocks but Takifugu drove the van at crazy speed until we entered the brightly lit vicinity of the main data-sanctuary. After the skirmish in the ruins they treated me like one of them. Even though the investigation was over, it was quite safe to hang out with them for a while. Until Panaque decides to rat on me.

A squad of Skitarii met the van before the fortified gates in the outer wall. Turret barrels stared at the bleak sky from narrow loopholes, watch drones were circling us like birds of prey. The only dash of life among the uncounted shades of grey, a red banner with the Mechanicus cog and the symbolic drawing of the system, was streaming on top of the gate under the lashing rain.

The Alpha Ranger of the squad exchanged a few remarks in binary with Ruy and Takifugu, then took a pict of my face and fingerprinted me. If I was lucky, they hadn't got access to the Inquisitorial bases through the destroyed outpost. Without further adventures, the guerrillas parked the van in one of the vast hangars, passed through two other lines of control and led me to the main keep.

Workers along with tech-adepts and Skitarii were fussing in twisting corridors and spacious cogitator-halls of the sanctuary. Some rooms had been repurposed for shelters where worker families or guerrilla militiamen like us were napping on rubber mattresses or munching their rations. We entered a decorated room where two Logis tech-priests were demonstrating a display of blackstone chips to a sassy rogue trader but Ruy didn't stop.

Elevator, corridor, another elevator. In the end of a long hall with about a hundred large servers two squads of Skitarii Protectors were guarding opulent doors with Mechanicus sigils carved in the adamantine and painted in gold.

The binary talk took longer than before, but then the doors opened. Rows of powerful lamps lit a gigantic strategium hall with auspex screens all over the back wall and a round table in the center. Crowded by dozens of motley Republican officials, it buzzed like a troubled beehive.

The vivid red of Polyspina's mantle stood out among her former subjects dressed in modest dirty overalls. Rather an elaborate metal construct than a human of living flesh, she walked past the screens on six polished legs of steel and stopped before a cogitator stall in the corner. Two of her numerous mechadendrites connected to the system unit, facial lamps started flickering under her hood. A middle-aged man in carapace armour over working clothes approached her from the other side, pointing at his dataslate.

Ruy nodded to us and paced forth towards the stall. Polyspina, now surrounded by already a few men, was waving her augmented hands, engaged in a fervent argument. When we stepped closer, I heard her metallic voice.

'And again, I cannot agree with you, comrade,' she addressed the man in carapace armour. 'Impossible to fight all threats forever. It means to nullify everything humanity has reached for millennia. We shall join our brethren from other planets to unite Mankind under the banner of the Galactic Tech-republic.'

'We've just got free from the Imperial tyranny, comrade,' the man replied firmly. 'You wanna pave your way to bigger leadership with the bodies of our people. That's the way of the Mechanicus. We aren't cogs in the machine anymore.'

'You've planned the uprising for so long to lose the war you cannot win alone. Do you know any allies to help you?'

The man clenched his gauntleted fists. 'We'll fortify the system even better to win us a few years. A bit of rest. Everyone from ten to sixty slaved fifteen hours a day when you were ruling Colomesus. I may have accepted you as a fellow Consul but I still remember. For how many deaths you're to blame?'

Ruy made us a sign to stop nearby until they finished the argument. I sensed well-hidden psyker presence in the room but the local witch was so skilled I couldn't locate them in the crowd.

One of other hooded enginseers raised his prosthetic hand. 'We have allies, Consuls. Those who love freedom as much as we do. Those who strive to liberate the Galaxy from the oppression of the corpse-worshippers.'

The man's face got red with anger. 'Don't you dare to suggest that again. The Despoiler wants nothing but to destroy anything within his reach. An angsty teen with powers of a demigod.'

'You've read that in Imperial propaganda leaflets, Chief Consul. He knows how to harness the might of the Immaterium for our profit. The Imperium is far away while the Black Legion is already in the system. Already here. It's safer to bargain right now.'

'I am sorry, comrades.' Polyspina's lamps flashed red and green as she showed a few lines of text on the screen to the Chief Consul. 'We have a first-hand account of the invasion. Let us listen to the witnesses after the psyker's report.'

A smiling man of the most unremarkable appearance waddled out of a back corner, hands in pockets. He blew aside a stray lock of copper-red hair that fell on his cheek from under the hood of his coat, greeted us with a light nod.

'What a lucky encounter,' he addressed us. The mocking voice and tone I'd heard only once but couldn't forget still. 'Nice to meet you again, Miss Inquisitor, my dear friend. Nice to just meet you, Interrogator.'

Panaque froze, his fists clenched. Ruy and Takifugu recoiled. All armed men in the hall took aim at me and Panaque.

Polyspina turned towards us but the Chief Consul stopped her with a brief gesture.

'Don't let the spies move. Warlock, tell us more about them.'

'For the boy, it's all simple. He won't do you much harm. He ran away from your purge of the Ordo Machinum outpost but he hates Chaos more than he hates you.'

'And the girl? There was a single full-fledged Inquisitor but he was killed.'

The glamoured sorcerer chuckled. 'She's trying to ruin our little profitable business. No blame, just earning pennies to buy another box of instant noodles for her beggar buddies.'

I felt blood rush to my face. 'Man, you nearly ruined my career after I'd rescued you from the engine. Even your late trader protege called you shithead.'

He gave me a warm smile. 'I'm gonna thank you for saving my life on the Galeos Parthenos. Just let me settle this with the Council.'

'You two know each other well enough,' said the puzzled Chief Consul. 'We didn't know you used to work for the Inquisition, warlock.'

'Wrong, sir. Just a random collaboration with dramatic consequences.'

'Down with the lapdogs of the Carrion Lord!' shouted the enginseer who supported the Despoiler. A few other officials shook their fists. 'Death! Death to both!'

'Sir, this man is ready to suck it to the Black Legion,' said the gull-sorcerer. 'I bet the Inquisitor hasn't arrived to the planet alone. She might be of use. Especially if she has info on the Pirate King.'

'While you're arguing, traitor marines are already rampaging around on the surface,' I said. 'The King's ships will bring down your walls and ramparts.'

'I've personally ensured the maximum fortification of this system vital for the Cadian frontlines.' Polyspina opened the data-sanctuary map on the screen. 'How many of the yours are here, Inquisitor?'

'All you should know - a whole fleet right from Terra will reach the system very soon. Even if you survive the attack of the Black Legion, your republic won't last for long.'

The Chief Consul turned away, clenched his jaws. He reminded me of the Boss from Eupulmonata. A noble man who cared for his planet. Who turned Polyspina's egoistic machinations to the profit of workers. Unfortunately, this time we were enemies, not allies. The Republic had been doomed since the first day when they raised their flag over the citadel.

'I personally don't want to fight you.' I looked down to the floor. 'I'd try to save you if…'

He shook his head. 'I know what you mean by the word 'save'. The best you Imperials can do is to leave us alone. Something you'd never allow. We're not tin soldiers for your games.'

'The big war is a real thing. I've seen daemonic horrors with these very eyes.'

'If warp monsters tear us up, the Imperium won't mourn the loss of one of its countless worlds. It won't send armies to defend us. It won't send food to starving workers. Generations die at sixty, fifty, fourty after years of everyday grueling toil. When will it all come to an end? When will you vanquish all those threats to Mankind to let us live?'

The garden variety of an Inquisitor usually fires their weapon somewhere here. And of course gets a neat hole in the forehead at best. Panaque was studying stains and cracks on the wall biting his lower lip. The sorcerer nodded after each phrase with a smug grimace.

'I'm just one lowly cop. Not a prophet or philosopher to answer such questions,' I admitted, pulling a wry smile. 'I'm much easier to kill than giant dudes in power armour, but I have friends who can defend you against both the King and the Terran warlord.'

'She's right about the fleets,' the sorcerer interfered. 'The Terrans are likely to beat the few Chaos ships sent to Colomesus, so I guess the Black Legion will try to get as much blackstone as possible before running back.' The warp around rippled. He rubbed his temples. 'Sorry, comrades. The other side wishes to speak to you.'

The Chief Consul frowned and crossed his arms on his chestplate. 'Come on.'

A flickering psychic projection weaved from aether smoke in the middle of the room. I covered my mouth so as not to chuckle at the sight of the Tyranid skull on the crooked shoulders of Magos Orthragus. Before he could notice me, I hid behind the guerrillas' backs.

'Hey you, worthless scum!' he started in his usual tone.

'Who am I speaking to?' The Chief Consul stayed calm.

'I'm a Magos and won't waste my words on lowly menials.' He went on in binary, so quick I couldn't catch a single word.

'I'm a Magos but I don't talk to Tyranids,' Polyspina unfurled her mechadendrites. 'Either you pay respect to our authorities, or begone, traitor of the Mechanicus.'

The enginseer fan of the Panther started muttering something in binary, bowing like a clockwork toy. The Chief Consul glared at him, and he stopped in the middle of a phrase.

Orthragus puffed a cloud of red smoke out of his maw. 'Play your stupid games if you wish, bunch of stupid rebels. The King wants you to pay him the blackstone tithe for his war. He even might accept your oath of fealty.'

'And dump us as easily as the Imperium,' said the Chief Consul.

'Don't chatter, launch the workshop right now. The King's warriors are already coming to your planet. By the way, the first squad has been assaulted by a group of your men. We demand them for due punishment.'

'We don't give our citizens out to robbers and worshippers of Chaos.'

'Stick your damn opinion up your ass, meat bag!' Orthragus clanged his Tyranid teeth. 'The King gives you time to prepare the machinery till the end of the solar day. Then Lord Warpsmith himself will oversee the procedures.'

Panaque pulled a grimace to the grinning skull. The projection vanished. Polyspina showed us ten red points on the vicinity map. 'Drop pods. We have to gather everyone inside the citadel.'

'Already ordered the return of all guerrilla groups,' reported one of the rebel leaders. The other tapped on his dataslate, and a few more flashing red dots appeared on the map. 'Groups currently engaged with the enemy. No chance of surviving.'

My dataslate gave out a tinkle. Fluffster was in the citadel. I cleared my throat and addressed the worried Consuls, 'We have a common point. Mistrust for Chaos.'

'You and Chaos have a common point, too,' answered the Chief Consul. 'Love for murder.'

'How many of you are still hiding?' said Polyspina.

'They're closer than you might think, Magos. I have space marines in my retinue, by the way.'

The Chief Consul tapped his fingers on his chin. Polyspina looked at him blinking her lenses. 'Comrade, I'm in worse danger than you anyway. As the documented Fabricatrix of the forge.'

'What happens to my people, Inquisitor, if we don't do you harm?' he asked.

'I'll petition for the acquittal of those not guilty of heretical or criminal deeds. But if you lay a finger on me or Panaque, or any of my acolytes, the Terran justice will be merciless.'

'To hell with all sides in this damn war,' he said grimly.

The slate tinkled again. 'We've located you. Moving towards you.'

'My fighters will arrive here soon,' I said. 'With my Magos's help, we have a chance to set a trap for the traitors.'

When Fluffster, clad in his bright red robe, entered in the glorious company of three marines, a mercenary in heavy armour and an imposing Repentia with an Eviscerator, heavy silence fell over the hall. The workers, intimidated by the giants in power armour, stepped back with the signs of the Aquila they had shunned before. He passed through the emptied middle of the hall and walked up to Polyspina. She leaned against the wall, completely down at the obvious perspectives, even her mechadendrites drooped to her shoulders. The Chief Consul raised his head, hand on his pistol.

'How were your trading negotiations?' I waved to my friends. 'Fluffster, wonder how you managed to persuade Sister to abstain from accusations of heresy.'

'Only the Imperium keeps horrors at bay,' said Fluffster, ignoring my jocular tone. 'Only He can deliver us from the overwhelming tide of the warp.'

The leader looked up at the hulking shapes of the marines. 'I believe Consul Polyspina's words. She's been to Terra but didn't see any traces of your fabled Emperor.'

'Blasphemy!' Sister clutched the sword hilt.

'Blasphemy!' Angel repeated.

'Just a brazen lie from one side and dumb naivety from the other,' Imudon bellowed. 'People who have seen Him walk the galaxy are still alive.'

I grabbed the sorcerer by the cloak as he prepared to sneak out through the back door. 'There's one among your trusted advisors, Consuls.'

'People cannot live for that long,' one of the enginseers said hesitantly. 'Even the longevity of space marines might be a fraud.'

'Your Republic is a fraud to save up some cash for your Fabricatrix,' Imudon parried.

I tugged the sorcerer by the sleeve but aether winds hit me in the face. His shape melted before my eyes. None of the gathered folks paid attention, only Aphedron chuckled under his helmet.

The Chaos-loving enginseer pushed his way through the officials and guards. 'Down with this stupid comedy. Has the Imperial witch and her big buddies cast a spell on you? They're eight, we're a hundred. In this bloody hall. Thousands in the citadel. Offer their heads to the King's men before it's late. Like you, Magos, presented us the heads of the tech-priests.'

A brisk move at the edge of my vision. The enginseer staggered with a gurgling sound. He pressed both hands to his throat and fell to his knees. Blood started dripping from his mouth. A bayonet had run through his neck so the end went out on the back side.

Imudon stepped over the stunned guard whose weapon he'd just borrowed. He put his boot on the still twitching body of the dying enginseer.

'Wanna fight, bastards? The three of us will slaughter you like cattle with your own weapons.'

The shocked rebels answered nothing. Even the cold-blooded Chief Consul clenched his jaws so the jawbones turned white.

'We haven't harmed you,' he nearly whispered at last. 'But you spilled the first blood in this hall. I had grudges with him, but…' He stopped and cleared his throat. 'But he was our comrade and brother.'

'He could have sacrificed us as well,' another enginseer objected all of a sudden.

'We've done the dirty work for you,' Aphedron said.

'All who are brethren with Chaos adepts deserve but death,' Imudon growled. I bit my cheek in a bout of nervous giggle.

'The Inquisitor was going to bargain with us.'

'To judge you for your treason.'

'That's what I want the least,' I whispered so as only my retinue could hear. 'Let's better make up a plan for the hearty reception. We have a few damn hours ahead.'

Imudon didn't move. 'They'll get what they deserve.'

'I allow you to use my kineblades if you want to silence a few more voices,' said Aphedron.

Younger worker delegates sobbed loudly. Ruy shook his head, Takifugu stared at me with hatred. Her fingers gripped the autogun but she didn't dare to fire.

To my relief, Fluffster decided to use his own authority. 'It is known you were born on Sacred Mars and took part in the annual control procedures in the inner chambers of the Palace. How do you dare to tell lies to the people?'

Polyspina stayed silent.

'Tell him, comrade!' voices cried out from the crowd. 'Tell him before the Council! You revealed the truth. About the real cradle of both humanity and the Mechanicus. Not Terra or Mars. Holy Phaeton that was blown up by the Imperium.'

Fluffster raised his paw solemnly. 'That's open sacrilege, Magos. Your blasphemous speeches have been recorded for everyone to witness. In the name of the Fabricator-General of Mars, I accuse you, Magos Piosa Polyspina, of tech-heresy. You have betrayed the Omnissiah and rejected His ways. You have slain His loyal servants. You neglected your duty to support His soldiers who are fighting at the Cadian Gate. These are crimes punishable by death.'

'Better today than on Mars,' she said back.

'You can atone for your transgressions. You know how.'

Her interface failed, and she reeled aside on her legs that slid apart under her weight. A holographic plan of the workshops lit up above the table. She uttered a phrase in binary. All enginseers present in the room hurried to the table. Takifugu and Ruy hugged. She gave me and Panaque a gloomy glare as she squeezed through the crowd.

'What did she order?'

'To plant explosives.'

'What about the other heretics?' Angel asked. 'Lady Volentia, they're to blame for the death of your colleague.'

'He was a fine man,' Panaque answered instead, doubt in his voice. 'He taught me to be a loyal agent of the Throne. But… Uncle Ruy and his men found me under a pile of rubble. When cultists had driven me into the ruins to finish me. Earlier, I wanted revenge but now, I want just to bugger off and leave everything to the Emperor's justice.' He flinched and grabbed the back of the nearest chair.

'They're not daemon-worshippers,' I said loudly. 'Deceived by Magos Polyspina's lies, yes. But they're eager to fight Chaos. To resist the Despoiler's conquest.'

As I'd expected, Uncle supported me. 'I've talked to some while waiting for Crinitus to finish the deal. Fine folks, like us. Not their fault that they know little about the shit that happens on Cadia.'

'You pity heretics once, then fall to heresy yourself,' Angel said. 'Remember the sorcerer.'

The familiar smug face showed up among the gathered officials but vanished the moment our eyes met. I showed him my middle finger.

'Let them redeem fighting the Panther's troops,' I said. 'Lord Mentor is better fit for judging than a petty Radical.'

Polyspina headed to the exit, followed by the obedient line of her tech-adepts. She bowed her head to the Chief Consul's nod.

'They won't suspect anything, Chairman. I'll meet them in the control center.'

'Farewell. There's no afterlife, you told us. So may you get a quick easy death.'

Was it a sacrifice for her forge, or trivial fear before the dire punishment, I'd still prefer to think the better of her.

I nodded to Takifugu when she passed by in their solemn deathrow chain. 'You aren't obliged to die to the last man.'

She glared back. 'Magos Polyspina is a second mother to us tech-adepts. All tech-priests should perish along with the forge.'

Fluffster pulled me by the hand. 'Not a question to be asked now, Volentia.'

He switched the map to the augur and camera screens from the workshop. Red lights of security systems were glowing deep in the dark of deserted halls. Deactivated cargo servitors stood in rows along dusty walls. Fluffster turned to Aphedron and Imudon. 'A special task for you, from Lord Mentor. We need a Black Legion captive from the Panther's army. You two should be there once Polyspina turns on the machines.'

'Chief Consul, allow me to speak.' A guerrilla commander stood up from his chair with a dataslate in hands. 'The Chaos Marine squads are moving towards the data-sanctuary. They won't be able to breach our defence but they're going to block all ways out.'

'Are there any new vessels in the system?' Before the Chief Consul finished his phrase, the sorcerer chuckled in his back corner.

'A cruiser has just left the warp right over the planet. But you shouldn't worry, our thoughts and words are well shrouded from any curious psyker-eye.'

'Good luck there,' I said to the two marines.

'Lady Luck loves the magnificent ones.' Aphedron saluted.

Imudon walked to the door.'Just don't tell us any of you will mourn our deaths.'

Hours passed in dull pointless waiting before the screens. When the grey day slipped into gloomy twilight, a shooting star shone on one of the screens. A drop pod in black and gold landed before the half-open gates of the barely animated workshop. Orthragus's shape hobbled out on mismatched legs. His black mantle got caught in the jammed doors, and he bumped into a security servitor.

Fluffster turned up the volume. The Heretek's voice screeched from the speakers.

'Where are all the friggin' rebels? Hurry up, drag them out if they refuse to turn it on, lazy bastards!'

His motley adepts scurried around the clumsy shape of their master, supporting his crooked limbs and carrying the long trail of his mantle. Four legionnaires walked after him without hurry.

'Where the heck is the Warpsmith?' I shrugged my shoulders as the drop pod doors slid shut.

'He's too smart to risk his life unlike this fellow who has no brains in his Tyranid skull,' said Fluffster.

My arms crossed on my chest, I gripped my shoulders watching Orthragus crawl into the building. The marines stopped before the gates and took cover one by one behind columns and annexes. Soon Orthragus appeared on the rightmost screen of the control center cameras. He exchanged a few irritated tirades in binary with Polyspina while his henchmen chose two senior-ranking enginseers from her retinue and dragged them towards the exit. I noticed Takifugu cower behind a column at the sight of the macabre delegation. Maybe a professional fault again, but my eyes started burning at the thought that a former comrade who had helped me would die thinking I was an enemy to hate.

The Chief Consul froze up, motionless as the blocked servitors of the shop. None of the rebels dared to utter a single sound. Polyspina, a scarlet spot on the dim blinking screen, leaned over the controls. Cargo servitors stirred in the storage area. First piles of raw blackstone mixed with ore poured on the conveyor belts of the arcane machinery.

'Turn on, friggin' turn it on!' Orthragus waved his mechadendrites. Polyspina lingered for a second. One more. More than half of the rebels in the hall had already folded their hands in the sign of the Aquila.

Polyspina reached out for the upper panels. A blinding light flashed for a mere moment. Then the screens went black.

'Good Emperor,' I read the Chief Consul's pale lips.

'May the Master of Mankind accept their souls as they atoned for their sins in death,' I said solemnly but my voice trembled on the last words. At least they had defended their people, even if not in His name.

Even my stubborn buddies kept mumb. For a few minutes we were staring at the blank screens until the guerrilla commander reported again.

'The intruders, Chief Consul. All marines are heading back to their drop pods. I'm afraid, we have to get ready,' he stopped coughing, 'to get ready for an orbital bombardment.'

'Check up the shields,' the Chief Consul spat out. 'All energy to the main keep.'

'The enemy ship!' the commander's voice failed him. 'They're… firing at our vent shafts and sewage reservoirs. Dumping bombshells in. Giant shells. Of an unknown pattern.'

'Whatever it might be, inform the sheltered citizens,' ordered the Chief Consul. 'Everyone must go down to the lower levels with protected vents. Our best squads will patrol the adjacent areas.'

I realised it was time to show benevolence after the brutal drama. 'We've got a high-ranking Magos and a certified medic. Those who pose no threat to the Imperial agents will be safe until the arrival of Terran fleets.'

'You call this safety?' The Chief Consul swiped the screen with an angry stroke. Augur data from the sewers. A loud crunch from the speakers echoed in the hall that went silent anew. Chitinous limbs broke through the shaking wall. In a hail of rubble a strapping beastly shape landed on the floor and leapt at the camera.


	7. Episode 1 Chapter 6

We were the only ones to react among the stunned factory rebels. I darted to the holographic model with the rosette in my outstretched hand. The dataslate connected without delay. 'Building the safest route to the protected levels,' the navigator's mechanical voice announced.

Paralyzed with panic, the Council delegates stared at the red dots moving on the map. Even the warriors of Chaos hadn't scared them as much. Even when the Chief Consul shook off the stupor and uttered the first orders in binary into his vox, they sat and stood still, too weak to move.

Smothering psychic haze was oozing into the data-sanctuary as alien predators crept up and down the shafts. Hormagaunts and lictors had blocked the main exit of the strategium quarters. The Skitarii guards retreated to the inner corridor between two fortified gates, trying to hold the monsters back for at least half an hour.

The Chief Consul leaned over the panel to type in the access codes. The part of the floor with the big table slid aside slowly, revealing a narrow passage below.

'What about the shelter dwellers?' I asked him. 'There are infestations in the vents of the former server rooms.'

'I've dispatched Skitarii squads to lead the people out in cargo elevators. They'll join us at the lower levels.'

Surrounded by guerrilla soldiers in the toughest carapaces, Angel descended into the passage. I walked in the rear with my retinue to cover the still helpless workers. Barely a third of them were able to fight at all by now, and even they hobbled and bumped into the walls at every turn as if deadly drunk.

Panaque struggled for every meter, his leg swollen despite Sister's stim injection. When he stumbled and dropped his pistol, Ruy left the guerrilla column and grasped him by the elbow.

'Fever,' he grunted. 'Hold on, lad. Inquisitor or not, you were one of us.'

I pulled an uneasy smile when he looked at me. 'You're ready to battle the Tyranids unlike most. I bet you faced them in the exploration travels.'

Despite his grief, he answered the clumsy small talk. 'No. My family's there in the shelter. My youngest grandson has just met his first birthday. I cannot bat my eyes at the beasts like a stoned junkie.'

'The beasts will get a load of fire down their hungry maws before they lay a claw on the civilians.' Uncle raised his gun, his eyes narrowed in cold anger.

The Chief Consul's face warmed up. 'Wife?'

'Wife and two kids. Because I'd got a stupid idea to venture away like in my younger years. There was nothing left of my city after the cultist riot.'

'There are riots and riots, bro. Cultist murderers aren't welcome here.'

'That's why we fight on the same side.'

'Your Ordos have killed many of us,' the Chief Consul said, 'and will kill more when the Terran fleet arrives. My first squad could have lived. Takifugu could. They were all younger than me.'

'I'm sorry for Takifugu,' I said. 'I was no enemy of hers.'

'She died thinking you were, Inquisitor.'

When the front of the column squeezed through a small gate in a ceramite-plated partition, a tall shape suddenly rose over the guerrillas. The exhausted militiamen froze up pressing to the walls, fingers on gun triggers.

'Only your devoted warlock, comrades,' said the sorcerer, stepping into a stripe of lamplight. A thin trickle of blood ran down his chin and neck from the corner of his mouth.

'What the heck are you at all?' a hysterical shout from the crowd echoed in the passage. A few others answered with loud sobs.

'A space marine. A brave guardian angel. More importantly, your friend.'

'I was sure you'd run away with your Black Legion buddies,' I said.

'You inquisitors always think the worst of people.' The rest of the phrase was a whisper inside my head. 'And the damn shadow in the warp. Don't wanna them to get apeshit crazy.'

'Wait,' I whispered back. 'That was you who summoned the legionnaires through your loyal cultists once I set foot on Colomesus. You warned the Warpsmith before the explosion. What side are you on?'

'My own, of course,' his psychic voice chuckled. 'You're smart enough to guess what my plan is but haven't yet understood my simple way of life. I allowed the safe passage of your retinue as well.'

'Fluffster will take you to Lord Mentor.'

'I dislike the old prick. So I have to make something up in advance.'

'You're trying to win the favour of Abaddon's lieutenant.'

He chuckled again. 'Both yes and no. Try to guess better when you have time.'

A loud crunch from behind the corner disrupted the link. I heard Angel's yell of fury. A sound of claws clashing with metal drowned in frantic gunfire. Younger militiamen in the rear dropped their guns and dashed backward. Fluffster grabbed me by the hand a second before they knocked me down.

'Hold the line, cowards!' yelled the Chief Consul.

Panaque sipped on his flask and chuckled with effort. 'Gonna get bitten by a bunch of nasty bugs.'

A chitinous monster, a head taller than a space marine in terminator armour, leapt over the column and landed before the running militiamen. A single swing of its scythe-limb ripped the first of them from shoulder to hip. Scarlet drool dripped to the floor from the lictor's tentacled muzzle as it stepped aside blending in with the shadows.

I took cover behind the sorcerer's back and fired the hellpistol at the blurred silhouette than phased in and out in flickering light. The dark beam of Fluffster's arcane weapon hit the lictor right before another leap but it slipped past the killed guerrilla's lingering comrades.

Blood splashed over my face and chest. A mighty blow hurled me to the wall. Claws scratched on the ceramite next to my head. Praying for a couple percent of power pack charge, I pulled the trigger aiming at the lictor's glowing eyes.

The beast's head exploded with a flash of dark flame. Fluffster waved his paw from the opposite wall. Uncle and Ruy, on one knee, joined the militia in heavy fire on a throng of hormagaunts who had flooded the passage.

Where the fighting was thickest, Angel was roaring at his foes, no less a beast himself. His lightning claw hacked off limbs and bone-scythes with every swing. Mangled corpses of fallen militiamen lay under piles of dead hormagaunts, and their mixed blood was streaming down the passage. About half of Angel's band were on their feet, all grievously wounded but clutching their axes and pikes with bleeding hands. Frenzied gunfire from our side mowed down the beasts yet they rushed over their dead as a crushing wave.

I pulled the zipper of the inner pocket. The moth, a tiny spot in the fading light, vanished in the horrid tide of Tyranids. In seconds, a pop-up window lit up on my slate.

'Chief Consul, Lord Crinitus, Consuls!' I shouted trying to get above the battle cacophony. 'The breach is a hundred meters down. This wave ends soon. Block the lower gates. Before the second tide.'

'Have to wait!' the Chief Consul shouted back. 'The elevator exit. Before the gate. A refugee group!'

I pulled out the hellpistol's dead power pack and stuffed the one from my old laspistol instead. After a few unbearable minutes Angel brought down the last hormagaunt and crushed its skull with his boot. Groans of the dying and sobs of the living filled the corridor.

'Good Emperor, we're not soldiers!' one of the Consuls cried out. 'They'll damn butcher us!'

The Chief Consul fired his gun into the air. 'Shut up! You took up arms to fight for the Republic. So stop whining to the big daddy from nursery prayer books!'

'The beasts killed them. Our best fighters.'

'Quicker,' I said. 'The second wave is coming from the upper levels. 'Pick up your wounded. Burn your dead. But first of all, I need a few explosive packs.'

While the rebels were paying the last respects to the fallen, I took Fluffster to the breach, a mauled vent halfway between us and the first gate to the lower shelter. Standing on Fluffster's shoulders, I activated the packs and stuck them inside the hole.

Dark smoke pulled towards the vent from behind. I folded my hands in the sign of the Aquila. The column continued their way down. Angel led a newly chosen vanguard group, other militiamen were carrying the wounded survivors in the middle. I took my place besides Uncle and Sister, trying not to look back.

The passage led to a wide chamber lit with red emergency lamps. A control screen flickered on the massive metal door in the other end as the Chief Consul walked out of the column and typed a code combination on his dataslate. The door started sliding up slowly. He checked his slate again and turned right, to a row of elevator doors.

'Inquisitor, order your space marine to go to the rear,' he said. 'They're too scared to meet abhuman brutes.'

I shook my head. 'He has saved many lives of your men.'

He ignored my words. 'Warlock, same for you.'

'The hormagaunts are getting close,' I said. 'Where are your citizens?'

He sighed. 'The elevator's stopping at every floor. The beasts have wrecked the machinery. Just a few levels left.'

I looked at the red circle of the pack moving through the shaft. The vanguard will blow up once they step on the explosives. If we're lucky, the blowhole will collapse and cut them off from the passage. Twenty seconds left. Ten seconds.

A distant blast shook the walls. Our fighters ran to the entrance. Metal and ceramite screeched under the scythe-claws of the Tyranids.

Finally, the leftmost elevator doors opened. Aphedron and Imudon stepped out, dragging a traitor legionnaire in battered black armour painted with garish Chaos sigils. All gathered folks yelled like one.

I pressed my hands to my ears. 'Chief Consul, that's damn creepier than my nice wee Angel.'

'The elevator had nearly broken down under their frigging weight,' he grunted.

Shuddering, quiet workers and silent Skitarii trailed behind the two scoundrels and their captive. Weary mothers covered their children's eyes, the elderly hobbled holding to the walls. The last to exit was a pale man in rich clothes, clutching a decorated pistol in his shaky hands. A rogue trader who wasn't lucky enough to escape to his ship before the Black Legion arrived.

A weeping elderly woman threw her arms around Ruy, and a younger couple pushed their way through the crowd when he waved his hand. A toddler boy was holding the armed man by the glove, the young woman was clutching a baby wrapped in a torn adult shirt.

Shots echoed in the passage. I caught the returning moth. Imudon threw the captive to the floor, both marines grabbed their bolters.

'Get in,' Imudon ordered. 'We'll cover the retreat.'

When the door clanged behind our backs, we had descended a long moving stairway to the second gate. Panaque flopped down to the foot of the stairs, and Sister hurried to him with a syringe in hand.

Aphedron came up to us, pushing the captive in the back with his bolter. Only then I noticed dents and stripes of chipped paint on his armour.

'Must've been tough,' I said. 'Emperor be praised, you've made it in the last moment.'

Aphedron raised his thumb. 'He loves His lost children, doesn't he? If He pulled us out of real shit, this is just an easy promenade.'

Imudon stopped by the gate and helped Angel to take off his mauled helmet. 'Your damn boasting led you to that shit, Magnificent.'

'At least I've got a special kind of reputation. The raider buddies scattered once they found out they're gonna face the famous Pansexualis.'

'Thought you hated the nickname,' I said.

'Not when it can be of some use, babe.'

Sister took Angel by the hand, trying to avoid eye contact with the two. 'Poor brother. There are two stim packs left,' she murmured more to herself as she went up on her tiptoes and started wiping blood off his drooping head.

The Chief Consul knocked on the door to draw attention. 'The rest are already in. Be quiet. We'll enter in groups of ten. Everyone, take a ration package and a gas mask from the lockers at the entrance. Inquisitor, you promised us help from your medic.'

Sister pulled the same prudish grimace I'd got sick of and pressed both hands to her chest. 'These are heretics. We shouldn't have stayed with heretics and traitors. We'll all die, by the Emperor's will.'

Blood rushed to my face. 'Stop nagging at last, you dumb hen!' I slapped her across the face but instantly regretted it. Sister dropped to her knees and burst into tears.

'Lassie, you've gone bonkers!' Uncle grabbed me by both hands. 'She's tired. Like all of us. She's crying.'

Anger died out. I rubbed my burning eyes. My own fault that I get huffy with people who care for me.

'Forgive me.' I squatted next to her and patted her shoulder. 'I just can't explain everything in detail right now. Trust the Inquisitor. If I tell you to do something, it has to be done. Lord Mentor will arrive and take us to a place where you can have a rest.'

'The Emperor... forbids it,' she whispered between sobs.

I facepalmed, struggling with the mean desire to smack her again. 'No. Ask Aphedron or Imudon, they has seen Him walk Holy Terra. Or...' I stopped, reluctant to reveal Fluffster's secrets.

Uncle helped her to get up. Further arguing would drive me nuts for real, so I turned to the inner doors where the Chief Consul was counting civilian groups with enviable indifference.

'Loonhouse of a work,' I grumbled.

'Indeed,' he said when another group had come in. 'An image of your Imperium. Man-killing monsters, fanatical idiots, both at the same time.'

Uncle and Ruy passed by, carrying a wounded guerrilla. His face and chest had been torn by hormagaunt claws so they were one raw wound. I leaned on the wall, struck by sudden sickness.

Sister entered the shelter among the last. Detached and silent, she proceeded to clean and bind wounds, repeating the same customary movements like a servitor. Once she bumped into a column and dropped her medical purse. She froze up until Uncle picked it up and stuffed it back into her hand.

Angel sat down in a back corner under a vent. He took the gas mask but put it in his lap and closed his reddened eyes.

I found Fluffster in a small control room behind the main chamber. The door closed, and I covered my face with both hands, enjoying the quiet. Gentle beeps of augurs. Fluffster's paws tapped lightly on the screens.

I breathed out and sat down next to him. 'Is it too late to retrain as an enginseer? To do real work instead of wiping the kids' noses.'

He shook his head. 'Your first mission after a long vacation, and you're already breaking down. Most inquisitors suffer from burnout. Many of them will jump out of windows and airlocks after the Cadian events.'

'Our rest went to dogs when you brought along the two.'

He leaned over to me. 'I must tell you something while your old friends are away. The two are better buddies for times of trouble. You're so stuck in your own drama that you haven't noticed that Uncle and the little ones are burning out much worse and much quicker than you. You don't belong to the kind of people that can provide safety for the three. May I offer you something?'

'First of all, I'm out of your secret games where I've got a single role of a lab rat.'

'Listen, then tell me your opinion. Decide with a cool head. Uncle's health is waning. The kiddos belong to their orders, not to you. When Lord Mentor arrives, let's set them free. Entrust Uncle to Panaque. Angel and Sister will rejoin their people fighting nearby. Lord Mentor will take the remaining four of us to the great battlefronts where history is unfurling before the eyes of men.'

A majestic job most inquisitors dream about. Where the three won't pull sad faces at new tasks. Where I'll fight for the Imperium at the forefront of the great war, alongside heroes of ancient Terra. I scratched my forehead. Old memories of the days in the owl popped into my head once I imagined saying goodbye to the three. Shame made the excitement fade.

'But we're a family, Fluffster. A team. It's just wrong to dump friends when they grow worn. Like old rubbish.'

'For their own good. I doubt they accept Aphedron and Imudon at all.'

'So why dump the old friends, not the two? Lord Mentor has found them, I bet he knows how to use them.'

He smiled. 'All old friends have once been new. Learn from the sorcerer. He's as welcoming with strangers as if he has known them for ages.'

I frowned. 'Well, the sorcerer. I'm sure he's already bargained with the Panther and is gonna frame us.'

'He has indeed. But the shadow of the swarm has thwarted his plans.'

'Love your talent to keep calm about everything.'

'He wants to avoid the Tyranids' teeth, and that matches our own goals perfectly.'

'Well, when there's one more traitor in the room,' I started.

'Loathing of the Tyranids is stronger than army or even race allegiances. Angel hates to recall that, but his own Chapter allied with the Necrons to fight the Devourer.'

I sighed watching the approaching dots of Tyranid packs on the augur screens. Some crawling through the vents, some roaming in the upper corridors. A large group was moving down the passage towards the gates.

'Thanks to the Emperor they don't have Carnifexes.'

Fluffster clicked on the list of cameras. 'Dammit. Genestealer hybrids.' The cadres were dim, but I saw a mob of mutated, vaguely humanoid shapes running down with guns and crates in their sinuous limbs. Four arms, bulbous heads like those of the fiend from the cultist lair. 'Likely explosives. The swarm summons its tainted stepchildren.'

'Must be freaking foul to turn into that,' I said sadly. 'Drooling, hungry beasts who has lost all traces of sanity.'

'They say, hunger and greed in a sentient being's soul attracts genestealers looking for new hosts.'

A yowl of fury from the outside made me flinch. I bit my tongue and cussed. All sounds drowned in a frantic cry of a few hundred voices.

I kicked the door open. 'Chief Consul, the Tyranids are yet to come! Calm your men down!'

He ran to the door, his lower jaw trembling. 'One of your men… Has gone completely nuts.'

I pushed my way through the crowd of refugees, rosette in one hand, pistol in the other. Aphedron, Imudon and the captive Black Legion marine were struggling to pin down Angel who fought back with beastly ferocity. Imudon put his gauntlet over Angel's drooling mouth but Angel's fangs left scratches on black ceramite.

The sorcerer pressed against the opposite wall. Blood was running down his chest from deep lacerations on his neck and shoulder. He tore off a piece of his robe and started binding the wounds.

'The Shadow,' he hummed. 'One good thing, you haven't become the second Panther after the visit to the valley.'

Angel pulled one hand from the captive's grip and pushed Imudon's gauntlet away from his face. 'I'll rip your heart out. I'll drink your blood, old foe.'

'You knew the story about the sergeant of the Luna Wolves,' the sorcerer went on calmly. 'Now you know what happened to him next. The King of beasts, a beast of a king.'

'Wait!' I shouted. The Tyranids, the Casbah, the Red Thirst, the Panther, all pieces of the same malign puzzle. 'The same thing that corrupted Iarmailt, that was stirring inside the Casbah. You know the solution to my hardest case. I asked you on Myristica, I'm asking you now. What's the damn connection between all that and the Swarm? Why all they wanna drink from the 'cup of her'...'

He put his finger to my lips. 'No, no, no. Some things shall never be talked about, dear. Not now.'

Angel's red eyes shut, his body went limp. Aphedron and Imudon seated the catatonic marine in the corner. 'He'll be back to himself in a few minutes,' said Aphedron. 'On a better day, I might tell you a few fancy tales about how my buddy got obsessed with his famous kingship.'

'Too much for one head,' I said. 'I'll write to Lord Kryptopterus about that. There must be answers in the archives of Ordo Xenos.'

'The xenos are coming,' Fluffster's voice sounded like a peal of thunder as the chamber got quiet. 'The hybrids are fussing with the first gate. Hormagaunts are moving to the blowhole. Wounded, parents with children, come to the control room.'

Angel got up with his eyes still closed. He and Imudon took up positions at the vent. Aphedron and the captive dragged the lockers to the entrance and took cover behind the makeshift barricade. The remaining Skitarii aimed at the door, guerrillas lined up with guns at ready, rebreather masks already on their faces. I saw Panaque who hobbled to the positions but Uncle patted him on the shoulder and pointed at the lightly wounded militiamen who were building another barricade before the control room. Panaque looked back at Ruy, and the old squad commander nodded.

I retreated to the door of the control room where Fluffster was checking his weapon. The sorcerer sat down at the threshold rubbing his forehead.

'Bad news, the Shadow had nearly blinded my inner sight, girl. But good news, there's a large solid of blackstone underneath. Can't promise anything but…'

'You should've taken your armour and weapons,' I said.

'I didn't plan to mess with our dear King's pets.'

For the first time I heard the captive speak. 'If I had a chapter under my command I'd purge the friggin beasts until the last one.'

'Didn't know you were an undercover loyalist,' said Aphedron.

'You haven't visited the Macan Kumbang since the venture to Iarmailt, Pansexualis. Their numbers are growing like hell. Our guys are about to start a mutiny. The beasts are eating sailors on the lower decks. The damn bucket stinks of their bloody musk.'

Claws hacked on the vent grate from the other side. The marines and the guerrillas opened fire.

Blasts from the outer passage reached my ears through the double doors and the gunfire. I got up on my tiptoes to see the screens over the refugees' heads. The sorcerer picked me up and raised me to the doorway arch.

Red dots flooded the shaft. All remaining hormagaunts were hurrying to the shelter from their landing sites. The hybrids were less in numbers but armed better. A lictor's maw showed up on the vent camera screen. The camera blinked and went dead.

The grate split in pieces. The lictor slipped through the breach before even the marines could blow it up. Fluffster coughed.

'Volentia, come in and watch the panels. Gotta help.'

When I squeezed through the refugees, blazes of dark flame flashed on the central screen. The lictor, caught in mid-air, collapsed on the captive. Then the brightest blaze blurred the image. Fluffster cussed in an unknown language, slapped on the smouldering sleeve of his robe. The now useless photon thruster lay smoking at his feet.

The door shivered under heavy fire. The few hybrids who hadn't run out of explosives hurled their packs to the threshold.

The blast threw half of our fighters to the floor. Stinky, musky smoke pulled into the room. Tears ran down my cheeks, my nose and throat itched so that I doubled over sneezing and coughing at once. 'Masks,' I wheezed out between the bouts. 'Put… on…'

Sister, already wearing the mask, ran to my chair. I pointed at the sobbing refugees and finally unpacked my own mask with trembling fingers. The door slammed shut. Only a few minutes later, when the ventilation systems had cleared the smoke, I pulled the mask down to my chin and took a deep breath

The smokescreen in the main chamber hid the mayhem of a skirmish from sight. The Chief Consul yelled out commands in the heat of the fight, the sounds of bolts exploding mixed with cries of agony. Guns went silent one by one.

The refugees huddled together on the floor. Children hid behind their mothers. The wounded lay still after Sister had given them painkiller sleeping medicines. A few whispered prayers, the others only covered their heads with their hands. Only the sorcerer was sitting next to me gazing at the ceiling with a bored look.

'Too many.' I shook the sorcerer by the shoulder. 'You said, there's a chance.'

'I said I cannot promise, dear. Trying my best.'

'I'm afraid the people will cause a stampede if the Tyranids break through the lines.'

A smile lit up his face. 'Cheering up is what I can do. Do you know this one? It's from Old Earth, from times totally forgotten by now. 'Whirlwinds of danger', kinda suits our current situation.'

He started singing. A timid voice from the back wall joined him. Almost everyone was singing by the end of the first verse. Tapping the rhythm on the panel, I turned back to the screens. Even after the sorcerer had leaned back and closed his eyes, the refugees repeated the verses as if they were a prayer to help.

Green dots of our troops, red dots of Tyranids scurried to and fro, all jumbled up in the enclosed room. The xenos were twice as many as the ours by now. Even the wounded guards outside the doors had already entered the combat. I pulled the mask up.

'Going out, buddy. They need every single gun.'

The sorcerer opened an eye. Sparks scattered from the tips of his fingers and soared to the ceiling. 'Don't hurry, dear. When the sparks kindle a big fire, warn them all.'

I got up and waved my hands to the still singing refugees. 'A minute of attention. Put back on your masks. Check up the kids, the wounded. Things will get hot soon.'

A memory of fire in the Chaos titan sent chills down my back. His soul-light was growing brighter, it broke through the heavy Shadow of the Swarm, brushed against my own cowering soul. The very air around him cracked at the building tension. He calls, and the rock answers. The brightest spark was hovering over his face. A few movements of his hands, and it turned into a colourful flamelet. A heatwave touched my soul, then my face.

I pressed on the announcement button, cleaned the dusty mic. 'Everyone, to the ground, right now!'

Wild fire of insane colours roared outside, flooding the chamber in seconds. The warp backlash threw me to the floor. I lay face down, clutching my head that had nearly blown up with sharp pain. A moment of fiery tempest, and the place went quiet and dark. Both the panels and the lamps were out, the locks opened after the systems had jammed.

'Captain Khalophis would have been proud of me,' the sorcerer whispered. 'The xenos' brains burned out in a second. The yours have got grazed but no one was killed.'

I took out the dataslate to turn on the lamp. A red notification window was flickering in the lock screen. 'Critically low level of oxygen'.

'Sister, everyone who can move,' I said coughing, 'let's check up who's made it.'

Panaque entered the shelter, upholding bleeding Ruy under the arm, Ruy's son-in-law supporting the old man from the other side. 'So, Uncle Ruy, that's how bugs ate your Republic. Sit down, have a rest.'

'You milksop,' Ruy wheezed out. 'At least, you fought well.'

'Have a sip of fine brandy.' Uncle slapped Ruy on the healthy shoulder and handed him his own flask. Sister threw her arms around his neck, and Uncle hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.

'Uncle, you're fine,' I gave him both hands.

'Lady Luck was on my side, lassie. The marines and the rodent will come in a few minutes, they're dealing with our survivors.'

'A damn epic ending.' Ruy gritted his teeth, his eyes glistening with tears in the lamplight. 'The Chief Consul is dying from battle wounds. We're stuck in this damn place. The outer passage has collapsed after the enthusiastic teamwork of the hybrids.'

'Some good news,' I heard Fluffster's voice. 'No Tyranids left on the planet. But all you can do is to wait for Lord Mentor's arrival.'

I looked aside to the sorcerer's corner. Empty. Only a faint, fading psychic trace. Cool draught from a closing door.

The verses of his song had stuck in my head. I turned to the scared refugees and started as cheerfully as I could, 'Whirlwinds of danger are racing around us…'

For twelve hours we had sitten in the dark, surrounded by our own dead and burnt carcasses of the xenos. Only then Fluffster got up and clapped his paws. The packed control room shuddered from floor to ceiling at a mighty explosion. Bright lamps flashed on the outside. A majestic warrior in plain dark armour stepped into the breach, and a sickening null field fell over the room.

'Lady Inquisitor,' one of the wounded Consuls muttered. 'The Chairman is unconscious. Most of us are dead, the others are dying. Let it be a decent ending for the Republic. A capitulation with honour.'

I walked out solemnly, followed by Fluffster, four marines and Panaque. Aphedron and Imudon stood to attention at the sight of the newcomer. 'Sir.' I bowed my head. 'From the Council of the Tech-republic of Colomesus…'

'Enough,' his deep bass bellowed. 'I don't care a damn about the nonexistent honour of the traitors you're defending, Inquisitor. Wait until I talk to Lord Crinitus. As for these,' he turned to the crowd in the room, 'they'll be taken to my ship. Those who survive, will toil on the frontlines they failed to support. The same for the every single worker of this forge.'

When we left the citadel and passed through the gate, I saw the Republican banner in the dirt, torn by the Tyranids' claws and teeth. Naive people who wanted the best for their brethren but had been deceived by the Fabricatrix General's ambitions. Hunger ignores dreams of freedom. So does Chaos.

Battered, glum workers, with hunched backs and grey peaked faces, were hobbling in the rear carrying the injured. I mumbled a few lines from the rebel song, as if to say farewell to the hapless state.

'Already sick of this song,' Lord Mentor growled. 'Even the Chief Guardian recalled it when we met.'

'It fits the news,' Fluffster said with a sigh. 'Let's listen to what the captive tells us.'


	8. Episode 1 Epilogue

Epilogue

The portal closed, and a suffocating stench of musk and ambergris enveloped the sorcerer when he stepped on the deck of the Macan Kumbang. Piles of picked bones lay in dirty corners, dried bloodstains covered the walls no one had bothered to clean. The sorcerer made a few steps forward, carefully peeping around the corners with his psyker-sight.

Not a single untouched human soul within half a mile. Only a pack of dim soul-lights veiled by the Shadow. He shivered, as if all uncounted trillions of the Swarm gazed upon him. He tapped on a control screen with a chuckle. The first time he had to choose tech over his most useful ability. Broken. He slipped into the next corridor. He had hoped to summon his daemon-pistol and armour from the warp storages but the Shadow had blanketed the ship so that even the cackling of the Neverborn drowned in its musky haze. The Hive-Mother's choking embrace.

A soulfire lit up on the very edge of his psychic reach. He gathered all his strength to take just one sneak peek. The Panther's twisted forgelord was sliding through the passages on his anti-grav throne. Love for magic, mistrust for the beastly power of the Swarm were the things they had in common. Valicar despised the Warpsmith but he had always relied on material things more than the sorcerer would prefer. Even serving as the captain of a ghost armada.

The sorcerer paced towards the buzzing of the throne's engines. He chose a path as far from the genestealers as possible, but the touch of the Swarm had left even more gruesome traces on plasteel and ceramite. Reddish throbbing flesh popped through the cracked plating, purplish scales were growing over the airlocks. When the sorcerer reached for a small bump of flesh on a half-open door, a ringlet of greasy smoke gushed out of small pores, weaved around his fingers. He blew it off, his guts spasmed at a strong wave of the stench.

'That's where the Headless Warlord was wrong,' a husky mechanical voice uttered from around the corner. 'This flesh is stronger than metal.'

'So nice to see you, friend,' the sorcerer greeted the Warpsmith with one of his signature warm smiles. 'I must trust you as you're the most competent among the King's men.'

The throne stopped hovering over the floor. The Warpsmith's eye implants flashed with crimson warp-light on his carved weasel mask as he gave his wraithbone-encrusted gauntlet to the sorcerer. 'Your good manners let you fare much better than your legion-brethren. And got you this job.'

'They're smart while I'm not. But interesting ideas come to my empty head from time to time. That's why we became friends.'

The Warpsmith pointed at the dais of his throne, and the sorcerer jumped up to the bottom step, holding on to the rack of working tools on the back side. 'Thanks for warning me,' the Warpsmith said. 'Orthragus got what he deserved. He'd crossed the line too often. You said, the Terran beagles are after His Panther Majesty?'

'The old pariah barbarian. I prayed to every god of the universe so they let me skedaddle before he arrived. The big cat knows nothing yet, but...' He winked to the Warpsmith and leaned over to his ear. 'The pariah had caught both Imudon the fearsome priest and our dear friend Pansexualis. Months ago. Both turncloaks are forced to run errands for the…' He giggled and covered his mouth with his gauntlet. 'For the Inquisition.'

'Crazy,' the Warpsmith spat out, and the sorcerer felt astonishment in the Warpsmith's cold aura. 'I've spent half a year in the company of his First Acolyte, and he hasn't spoken a word about his promotion. A nicer man than his reputation states. You have to get acquainted with him. A prodigious skill of tuning in to daemon tech. The Evernight comes alive when he just steps closer.'

Eerie cold pierced the sorcerer's body despite the musky heat of the barge, fear gripped his hearts. He should have listened to Ashur-Kai's warnings. 'I've met him for a few times in the past,' he said amicably while the Warpsmith hadn't noticed his confusion. 'Sounds fantastic to work together.'


	9. Episode 2 - Liquid Courage - Prologue

Prologue

On the first morning of the new year snowfall had stopped. Even at daytime the swollen Eye showed through the heavy clouds like a purple bruise. It had spread over a quarter of the sky, a growing tumor of malice. The oldest of Cadian archives didn't remember it grow that large. Astropaths reported of abhorrent visions, their blind eyes bleeding. Soldiers were whispering about sinister portents and nightmares behind the commissars' backs.

Rising winds swept dry snow across rows of tombstones on the edge of the Tyrok Cemetery. Colonel Creed stopped over three modest name plaques and knelt down to clear them. Letters on the oldest one had faded after years under wind and rain. When the cemetery priests fail to read the name at another check, her bones will be thrown to the common nameless grave along with thousands of other dead defenders of the fortress. Like they had done to his birth family.

The newest one still looked almost like last year. The day when they had fixed the plaque over a fresh grave.

'Like it happened yesterday, Jarran,' he said to his friend, Colour Sergeant Kell, who was praying before the closed gates of the cemetery chapel. Away from the regiment, they could talk as equals they used to be. 'There were many who mocked me. Take another wife, they said. A Colonel should have sent his sons to safer duties, they said.'

Kell bowed his head finishing the prayer, then turned to Creed. 'May they rest in His peace, along with my ole lady and my elder kids.'

'Your youngest boy will get his sergeant promotion at the parade, I've seen the lists today.'

Kell smiled. 'Hope he'll be smarter and luckier than his pops.'

'It counts as luck to be among the two survivors of our whiteshield regiment.' Creed smiled back and took his flask off his belt. 'To all our dead. Loved ones, friends.'

'Another year on the battlefield. As if it all started a few days ago, but I suddenly woke up scarred and grey.'

'This won't be just another year, Jarran. Something is coming for us. The damn Purple Asshole wants to swallow us all.'

Kell gulped the remaining amasec from his own flask and bellowed, 'Have a sip to calm your nerves, Urs. Even if it's a Black Crusade, Cadia has seen twelve of them. Every time the ours kicked the traitors' ass and sent them back to their shithole.'

Creed nodded. 'Cadia stands while we hold on. Hard battles to be fought in days. The very trouble I sensed in those ruins.' He gritted his teeth as if in pain. 'It's back.'

Kell looked at his dataslate. 'The parade will start soon. Let's go.'

'We have some time. Don't panic.' Creed breathed in with effort. A dull pain in his chest hadn't gone even after a whole flask. That fight he still saw in his nightmares. The damn shell had fallen into their trench. For his bloody luck, he had come to himself with a contusion and a torn leg. She lived on for less than a day afterwards. Both sons had joined her. But for his bloody luck, he was still alive. The Emperor needed him for battles yet to come.

His vox beeped. He caught the wind of threat once he reached for the bead. 'Sir…' The reporting guardsman's voice was drowned out by shots and frenzied cries. Only a few words broke through the cacophony. 'Traitors… Assaulted… Lord Governor…'


	10. Episode 2 Chapter 1

Lord Mentor summoned me once the Righteous Fury, his ancient cruiser of an unknown pattern, left the darkened surface of Colomesus behind. He had demanded that my team's scant belongings were transported to the Righteous Fury from Tamias's vessel along with the owl. Like the captive Black Legionnaire, we turned out to be hostages of the Terran big dogs. Fluffster had followed Lord Mentor to his strategium with Aphedron and Imudon right after the boarding while I stayed on the bridge with worst anticipations.

When the dim planet disk in the oculus screen gave way to the black of space and the navigator announced the preparations for the warp jump, a mechanical voice clamoured from the speakers over the platform, 'Inquisitor Volentia of Ordo Hereticus, Lord Mentor orders you to appear before him. Retinue acolytes not allowed.'

Sister and Angel who were sitting on the edge of the platform, gave me an anxious stare. Uncle sighed, a flask in his hands again. 'Ain't no good,' he said sadly.

'Nothing bad can happen to Lady Volentia, Uncle,' Panaque came to my rescue. His face was pale with strain and lack of sleep but he smiled to my friends down in the dumps. 'I bet it's dinner time already.'

'Wait for me in the rooms,' I said. 'I'll try to get away from the geezer soon.'

Sister's eyes widened. 'He must be listening to the talks.'

'Only another inquisitor is allowed to judge me. Terran warlord or not, he's another citizen of the Imperium.'

'Unwise to think so.' Angel frowned. 'He can just slay you where you stand.'

Sister sobbed. Uncle grabbed his gun.

'I had to tell you something so that you didn't shiver with fear,' I said with a sigh.

'There's Lord Crinitus,' said Panaque. 'He's a trusty friend.'

'If you only knew more about this wooly scoundrel,' grunted Uncle. 'Fine, boy, you need to take your pills now. Ask Sister.'

'Gotta hurry up now, folks.' I waved my hand running up a winding stairway to the upper levels of corridors.

Lord Mentor's strategium was located on the upper deck, among fortified chambers in the end of the ship opposite to the navigator spire. Giant combat servitors were patrolling the passages, heavy relic guns in their metal limbs.

Two Tempestus Scions with Adeptus Terra heraldry lowered their weapons in silence as they saw me. I stopped before an adamantium-plated door with the majestic Raptor Imperialis carved on the entire height. The door slid open. I folded my hands in the sacred sign and stepped into the cold white light of the strategium.

In the middle of the pristine chamber, on tall chairs around a polished metal table, the four ancients were browsing a large holographic map of the sub-sector. The configuration of a highlighted system seemed vaguely familiar. A small planet on the edge with a black mark on the surface. One of my sour memories. Pholiotina.

Lord Mentor answered my polite bow with a short nod. His stern angular face with an aquiline nose and deeply set stone-grey eyes resembled warriors from battle scenes sculpted in military memorial halls.

'I have studied the full account of your work activities, Inquisitor.' His tone softened since the appearance in the shelter but the calmest of his intonations were enough to scare most into shitting their pants. He had subdued his null field so that only a slight chill ran down my back when he spoke to me. 'Have to admit, it has slightly improved my opinion. Lord Crinitus defends you with lengthy speeches. Having earned his benevolence means permission to continue your career, with all due precautions.'

I bowed again. 'Thank you for your priceless trust, my lord. I am delighted to serve the Imperium with zeal and devotion.'

Fluffster wanted to say something but Lord Mentor interrupted him with a steely stare. 'To serve means to obey orders. Despite your severe transgressions, you have done worthy service to the Throne Agents, and this has been rewarded by the addition of two qualified fighters to your retinue.'

I decided I had bowed down enough for today. 'Sir, my sincere thanks. May I…'

'Mentor, may I say something first.' Respect, even humility in Fluffster's tone were new to me. 'I am concerned by the tension in the group after the arrival of the reinforcement.'

Both marines looked down at the table. So awkward to listen to the third-person discussion. When Imudon turned his head to the map, I gave him a light nod. The corners of his mouth moved. Almost a half-smile. Lord Mentor frowned, and Imudon lowered his eyes again.

'Acolytes have to obey their master, and the master should uphold their discipline in His name. They have been brought together by the common cause of protecting Mankind,' Lord Mentor said.

'I am content with how Imudon and Aphedron perform their duties.' Words I couldn't have said a month ago. But now they were in my team so I had to defend them before the stern man who had the right to judge us. I touched the rosette I had put on my neck before the visit. Not us, them.

'They have been pardoned by His will but they still have to take the penance, Inquisitor. So do you. You know this place.' He pointed at the black dot on the surface of Pholiotina. 'The Despoiler needs the abominable craft from the Panther for the attack on Cadia. My task is to stop the Panther. You shall assist me.'

'Because I surpass him in swordfight,' Aphedron interfered.

'I have not allowed you to speak,' Lord Mentor bellowed.

I've served for the Ordo for long enough to know what they usually meant by the word penance. After we'd seen the mysteries of the dark shrine, we became unwanted witnesses to the Terrans' schemes. Despite his relatively amicable words, Lord Mentor won't put up with the risks of my mark.

I took a deep breath and crossed my arms. 'If we speak about laws, my lord, let me remind you of another Imperial law that defines my status of an Inquisitor. Only another Inquisitor can rightfully detain or judge me.'

His harsh eyes stared into mine. 'I am older than all of your Ordos. I know what shall be done.'

Fluffster sighed. 'Mentor, we cannot deny the immediate threats in the vicinity. There are very few full-fledged Inquisitors left around Abilene. So, if Miss Volentia gets an urgent request…'

I smiled, surprised by his intervention. But Lord Mentor shook his head before Fluffster could finish. 'First, the nature of any threat must be discussed. I cannot alter the course at every whim. As for the two, I will not let them go even if Miss Volentia decides to answer the plea. And after the mission, she shall return. At least, until this quest has been finished.'

After the talk he dismissed me soon but the two stayed to discuss further plans. I decided to find out more during breakfast on the next day. The Righteous Fury had entered the warp, and most sailors left the bridge area for their duties. I walked past the stairway that led to the closed oculus, past the sealed chamber of the Machine Spirit. The dataslate in my pocket tinkled. A message from Uncle. 'Lassie, when you're free, come to our rooms. Third deck, compartment number two. The lunch is waiting for you.'

Through the open door of the compartment common room I heard Panaque's cheerful voice. He was telling some story to my friends, and they laughed back. Even my sad 'little ones.'

'...But when they got sober, the horrid warp apparition was nothing but the High Inquisitor's cloak left out to dry!' Panaque blurted out the ending, and Sister giggled clapping her hands.

'Good they didn't have a flamer or a melta,' Uncle said after a burst of hearty laughter.

'Imagine them with a vortex grenade,' Panaque said. 'A crowd of real warp monsters instead of the mock one, and the High Inquisitor would have to battle them without his dramatic cloak!'

I looked in smiling despite my heavy thoughts. Like long ago, they had gathered for something other than nagging. Dirty plates left from the lunch were stacked in a neat pile on the edge, two clean ones and a glass stood in the center. Uncle took a metal container out of a storage box in the corner.

'Munch it before the cleaning servitor takes it away along with our plates,' he said opening the lid. Panaque closed his eyes and grinned at the smell of food but Uncle patted him on the back. 'You've already had your share, boy. Let lassie have her well-deserved meal. I'll look up in our food stocks, there must be something left for you. Salami, dried fruit, cookies.'

I grabbed a fork from the table and picked up a piece of fried meat right from the container. Uncle shook his head. 'Well, lassie, we're in a decent place, not in the slums or on the battlefield. A good chance to have a proper lunch. A second, I'll put it on the plates.'

The enthusiastic family care I'd already overgrown but Panaque accepted eagerly. That's why he had succeeded in restoring their morale in a few hours. I thanked Uncle and let him do the proper serving so as not to upset him.

'Our first meal after the looted storage.' Panaque took a pear from a package of fruit brought by Uncle. 'I've missed normal food for all the last year. Colomesus had nothing but those ration packs, and the old man thought it was perfect for honing temperance and resilience. Twice a week, everyone at the outpost had to fast on dry crackers and nutrient mix.'

I chuckled back. 'We have to fast as well. Sometimes. When we're tight on cash.'

'Don't worry, boy,' Uncle said in a hurry when Panaque pulled a funny grimace of mock disappointment. 'As we have to care for you now, you'll never be forced to eat crap. Lord Corydoras has promised to fund our missions better.'

'As you see, it's more fun to hang out with us,' I said. 'Your Interrogator rank benefits us all. You'll get the rosette in a year or so, I'll get experience in teaching and good bonuses to my regular wage.'

'Is the rodent planning to come back at all?' Uncle grumbled. 'His processed cheese is waiting for him in the fridge.'

'He's stuck in the strategium with his boss and the two,' I answered. 'Between us, they've got a hold on our throats. Talking about how we have to atone and so on.' I stopped when I realised the news on Pholiotina would be too much. 'The best we can do is to enlist to any, just any urgent mission in the area. I've sent a note to the astropaths. As for the two, Lord Mentor is gonna take them for his own business.'

Relief in the eyes of Angel and Sister made me crack a wry smile. I knew they wouldn't approve that, but I was getting used to the former archnemeses tagging along. Strong grown men with stoic attitude and a darker sense of humour. The worst memories were fading, the nostalgic athmosphere of my previous adventures made all those machinations and forced alliances look rosier. A safer piece of my old little world changed forever by their transformation and redemption.

A week had passed, and I started to get nervous. The Righteous Fury had already completed the bigger half of the voyage, and the navigator planned to leave the warp a few systems away from Inocybe on the far edge of the Abilene sub-sector. The two were away in the living blocks of Lord Mentor's soldiers. Fluffster appeared once or twice a day to ask a few random questions and grab a block of cheese but never gave any detailed answers himself.

We were finishing a dinner laughing to Panaque's military tales, when Fluffster came in with a dataslate in his paws. Before even looking into the fridge, he sat on the couch next to me.

'Volentia, you got your wish. The astropaths have received a call from a nearby system. Do you want me to upload it to your slate right now or after the meal is over?'

I swallowed a spoonful of soup and swiped on the screen of my slate. 'The quicker, the better.' I lingered, trying to pick better words. 'Well, I thought, we'd try to return to our older friendship and sincerity. There are things Inquisitors usually do by themselves.'

'Count me as your honorary secretary then.'

'Secretaries don't read letters.'

'I wouldn't be so sure after working in bureaucracy for millennia.' He tapped on the screen. My slate beeped. I opened the message with an attachment folder. A regular situation in our times of trouble. A city on a planet during a Chaos invasion is disturbed by rumours of a genestealer cult lurking in the underhive. Almost all local PDF forces are either defending the mountain passes against throngs of ragtag traitors along with two Guard regiments or dead after a successful raid on the city. The attachments were few, random picts of genestealer emblems, an account of a Chaos battleship that had passed by and bombed the main hive. Many officials had died, most records had been destroyed so they couldn't even tell me whether the cult had been detected before or after the raid.

'The stray cat has turned the sub-sector into a damn zoo. I wish I knew how the thing in the Casbah left its stench on him so the Tyranids can sniff it across the galaxy,' I said.

'One day, you'll find answers for your questions,' said Fluffster, 'but only to learn there are things better to be left unknown.'

On the next standard morning I had all our things packed and sent back to Tamias's ship. After three full days on the now-abandoned route we exited the warp right over Hive Secundus of Metrioptera. I hurried to the bridge only to see it almost empty. A few brandy bottles under the command throne, a cleaner rubbing the cracked command screens. She picked up her mops to let me sit before the main screen and hobbled to the oculus with a sour face. I typed in a short notification for Tamias and sent a request to the city administration. 'The Stumblebum, a trading vessel currently under the control of Ordo Hereticus, has arrived to check the city on your plea. Find a place in the orbital docks.' I had thought about an incognito visit so as not to startle the genestealers but we needed allies in the remaining institutions to battle the cult.

The answer came within a few minutes. 'Lady Inquisitor, we are ready to meet you and your retinue. We are sorry for the modest reception but Hive Secundus is currently recovering from a heavy bombing by traitor forces.'

Tamias appeared only when my retinue had gathered on his shuttle deck before the stack with the owl. He walked up to us slowly on shaky legs, holding to the columns and walls. His garbs were dirty and wrinkled, he was rubbing his swollen eyes smearing drunken tears over his face. When he spoke to me, the reek of booze and puke made me flinch.

'L-l-lady.' He hiccupped and wiped his runny nose with his sleeve. 'My astropath… saw in the w-w-warp… T-t-the B-b-biruang.' Once he said this word, he fell to his knees and threw up.

I shook him by the shoulder. 'It was the Biruang that bombed the city? How far is the ship now?'

He was sobbing helplessly. The first mate ran out of the elevator and picked his captain up from the floor. 'Sorry, my lady. I'll watch over the docking. The news have been… quite disturbing for him. We'll send you further details when we get more information.'

As the owl was descending to the surface, I recalled previous accounts of Tamias's shady deeds and his horror at the perspective of getting close to the Panther again. Wanted in the pirate kingdom.

'The second trader captain drinking himself to death because of Chaos contacts,' I said to my friends. 'The best adverse publicity.'

'Stupid people see gold and drugs renegades boast,' Uncle answered. 'But don't see these renegades kick the bucket as a mindless bunch of tentacles.'

'Chaos temptations make them blind,' said Sister. 'I wonder who are sane but choose to consort with daemons. Even mighty Chaos warlords like older Aphedron were living under the constant threat of damnation. Irreversible damnation.'

I scratched my temple pondering. 'Sounds like not that irreversible.'

She failed to find a proper answer from her fine theological indoctrination. The case of the two pardoned by doubtless manifestation of the Emperor's will had shaken her picture of the world. For the first times even since our meeting, she was trying to find a solution of the inner conflict by herself.

The owl landed on a narrow strip marked by a row of red lights. It was a medium level of the Administratum complex, a district located far from the most presumed genestealer sightings but badly damaged by the air attack. Two of the three office skyscrapers had been turned to giant piles of debris, the one we landed on had charred breaches in all the upper levels.

The door opened. I smoothed the collar of my new coat and adjusted my hat. Panaque thrusted out his chest with the brightly polished Interrogator Seal.

An official in a dusty black mantle stood before the open entrance to the building in orange evening sunshine, two motionless Arbites waiting by each side. He bowed down, his hands folded in the sign of the Aquila.

'May the Emperor bless you, Lady Inquisitor. We have prepared rooms in the guest living blocks. Unfortunately, your colleagues perished in the bombings and the subsequent big fire but our surviving Logis Magi and enginseers have managed to recover some data from the servers.'

Before coming in, I caught a few glimpses of the city panorama around. Spots of ruined blocks showed black on grey and cream rockcrete. A symbol of unceasing life, neon signs flickered here and there with every vivid colour, reflected in glass surfaces of remaining malls and public buildings. The big gilded dome of a cathedral shone in the last rays of the setting sun.

'Sir, what institutions may we count on?' I asked the official as we were walking through a long gallery with broken windows.

The official frowned and kicked away a sharp chunk of glass. 'I cannot promise much, with all due respect, my lady. A few hundred Enforcers. A hundred Arbitrators.'

'What about the PDF? Are there at least any present in the city right now?'

'Well… There's a problem with Hive Primus across the mountain ridge.'

'You have written about the incursion.'

He bit his lip. 'My lady, please, have mercy. This is above my authority. The Governor is dead. The Mayor is dead. Most of the top officials are dead. I'm just the Prefectus of the City Department of Waste Recycling.'

'So let's deal with xenos waste that's lurking underneath. But first, Prefectus, what do you mean by 'problem'?'

'The incursion is growing much worse than we presumed,' he lowered his voice to a whisper. 'I didn't have access to the details. You know that two Guard regiments answered the Governor's last plea. They're currently defending the narrow pass to our city along with all remaining PDF of the continent but their numbers are dwindling. Even that's considered quite a reassuring situation in our times. We are ready to face a full-scale calamity.'

I couldn't but smile looking at his imploring face. 'Please, Prefectus, don't look at me like I'm gonna burn you on the spot. We need to act quickly.'

'There are enough emergency food reserves, just in case. After the bombings, another ally volunteered to help us. Our bishop summoned a whole force of Hospitaller Sisters from the Order of the Healing Spring, led by the Canoness herself.'

Sister pressed both hands to her chin, her eyes widened. I gave Fluffster a stink eye. He had known that since the beginning.

'Perfect. I expect you to transfer all necessary data to our cogitator through the protected Administratum network. Inform us about all other threats as soon as they come out.'

Already behind the closed doors of our room, I leaned on the windowsill and looked out from the other side of the building. The sun had set, and leaden clouds were overcasting the sky still ablaze with sunset oranges and reds. Distant outskirts and skyscraper outlines vanished in the grey veil of rain. I found the districts with most genestealer encounters. Arches of aqueducts and bridges untouched by the assaults descended to the lower levels over a slow-flowing sewage canal.

'I remember what my mentor told me about Genestealer Cults,' Panaque said proudly. 'Not the Machinum one. First I studied at a Xenos citadel, right after my school graduation. Sewage reservoirs are convenient locations for Patriarch lairs.'

'Occult knowledge available to a few,' Fluffster grumbled.

I decided to support the boy eager to be useful. 'It's great to get some Ordo Xenos lore for the investigation. I'm just a Hereticus cop who's forced to clash with daemons and xenos instead of checking gingerbread for heresy like Lord Astronotus.'

'I was so surprised to find out the Ocellatus sector is the safest one around,' said Panaque. 'My mentor always mocked the retinue and customs of Lord Astronotus but when we got the last numbers of vanquished and existing threats in our sector and Ocellatus, I heard him cuss for the first time ever.'

I recalled the trip from the shrine. 'Lord Astronotus isn't the eccentric paranoid he wants other people to see. I bet he takes part in the machinations of our big dogs.'

Fluffster smiled back. 'You're a good learner, Volentia.'

Sister was pondering the news, still obviously confused. 'I really miss the Sisters,' she said finally. 'But… I'm afraid my fail was too horrible to pardon. Would be such a shame to appear before them again.'

'The Emperor let you to join the Holy Ordo to continue your fight against Chaos,' I said. 'So please Him with zealous work during our investigation.'

I took the big cogitator out of Fluffster's box and put it on a small table before an armchair at the window. 'Don't disturb me for an hour or so.'

Lists of files appeared on the screen as the download was going on. I opened one of evidence picts. On the blurred screenshot from a street camera a bald man with a peculiar elongated head was getting out of the car. Where the street lamp cast light on the car door, a gilded emblem of two joint beast heads formed a blasphemous mockery of the Imperial Eagle.


	11. Episode 2 Chapter 2

It was raining when I pulled the curtain aside to look at the grey daybreak city. Street lights had gone off, and only a few shop signs were flashing through the fog. Strings of yellow and red headlights moved along the crowded highway under our windows and disappeared in the living blocks underneath.

A muffled clatter of bowls and pots came from the next room where Uncle was busy with the breakfast. My retinue, curled up on their sleeping cots, were still watching their morning dreams. I walked on tiptoes past Fluffster snoring over the cogitator and headed to the kitchen to help Uncle and have the first cup of fresh recaff or even coffee.

I pushed the door, and a stripe of light fell on Angel's corner. The blanket had slipped off the empty cot. His armour stacked at the headboard was gone. With a sudden sick feeling in my stomach, I reached for my pistol.

'Morning, lassie!' Uncle called out from the next room. 'We've got an unopened package of coffee in the lower drawer.'

He turned his head from the bacon he was slicing and pressed the side button of the coffee machine.

I shook my head. 'Snacks can wait a bit, Uncle. Have you seen Angel?'

'Poor boy.' Uncle sighed and leaned over to pull a bunch of green onions from the portable fridge. 'I bet he saw another nightmare. He leapt up like crazy an hour ago. Didn't tell me anything. Just carried his armour parts to the outer hall. Everything is going bonkers now. A good munch might cheer him up.'

I breathed in and closed my eyes. My psychic glance slipped through the rooms, to the corridor. Angel's soulfire was out of my reach. Only a fading trace behind the compartment door.

I shoved the pistol back, drank a full cup of coffee in a single gulp. 'A few minutes, Uncle. Don't tell the others anything right now.'

My heart sank at the image that popped up against my will. Feathers, white and red, scattered over the bridge. The Grim had been sure we were powerless to struggle against the bad blood all brothers of the Ninth share. One way or another, the Red Thirst or the Black Rage found their way to turn a noble man into a beast or a vengeful loon. But still, the former seemed scarier, a random thought struck me. A call of hunger that had been singing in Angel's ears as we were flying to the Casbah. It came alive where the trace of the Great Devourer was found. Fluffster knew the reason but refused to tell it. Maybe Angel did as well. Was it too scary even for a full-fledged Inquisitor?

Step by step, I walked out of the compartment, concentrating on the trail. A bit of bad luck, and Angel would rip me to pieces before my friends heard my cries. I walked a few meters further into the corridor until a reddish glint of his fierce aura flashed from the balconies in the end. The worst of the two. Smouldering wrath ready to break out.

He was standing, still as a stone idol, behind the dusty glass of the balcony door, a dark shape against the grey skies. Hand on the doorknob, I lingered for a few seconds. Bluish sparks were running over his activated power blades. Claw marks crossed the smoked fencing.

I pulled at the knob. 'Hey, brother.'

He turned to me with a grace of a jammed automaton. Green helmet lenses stared at my face as if I was a warp ghost. Good they aren't scarlet as the Panther's, I thought suddenly.

'You were strong enough to reject the temptations of the place. Screw the sorcerer's ramblings. You're tense as hell since we kicked the chitinous asses of the Pirate King's beloved pets.'

He slashed across the fencing plates. Four thin strips of clean metal shone under the lamplight from the corridor. Then the sparks died out. He pulled off the gauntlet with the deactivated weapon, then took off his helmet. A hectic flush glowed on his pallid face, his upper lip moved revealing his sharp fangs in red froth. I gave him my hand, and he squeezed my fingers so hard I bit my cheek so as not to cry out.

'It's in the blood. My sire's blood in the veins of his sons,' he whispered wistfully. 'That place has awakened the call of blood. My brethren come from a stock of goners but strive to become angels. Some fail. Actually, many do.' He gritted his teeth, and a grimace of fury distorted his comely face into a beast snout. 'The accursed stench of musk prevails throughout. Do you feel it?'

'Their presence.' I touched my pistol.

'I thought I'd better take wing, like my sire. Down there. Before the Thirst could overtake me. But it's utterly dishonorable, to give up without a proper battle. Without and within. While there are abominations to rip to pieces.' He licked his fangs.

I clapped him on the shoulder. 'I like this better than your previous whining.'

'Life is His gift. Too precious to waste it.'

We both turned to a sound of steps from the corridor. Sister, sad and pale, reached for Angel with both hands.

'Kiddos, the breakfast is ready. Fooling around is the last thing we need. Fill your bellies with fine food and let's set off. The boy's already munching his share,' Uncle said from behind her back.

'Uncle, did you tell Fluffster?' I asked.

'The rodent just shrugged his shoulders, as always. Maybe he's still cross with you for leaving the old Terran buddy's ship.'

'He has chosen the task himself, so I doubt that.' I squinted at Sister who was consoling Angel with her signature mixture of kind words and preaching.

'Maybe it will really help her, if she meets her friends from the Order,' said Uncle. 'So that her self-loathing and guilt could be healed at last.'

During the meal, I opened the latest files and added a few newer coordinates to the list in my map application. All confirmed sightings had happened before the arrival of the Biruang, in the lower district around a flood gate at the entrance to the underhive. Startled by the bombings and, likely, by the presence of their kind on the Panther's ship, the genestealers had retreated to the depths to wait for the nearest Hive Fleet. Still, scared citizens kept on reporting spiral graffiti on fences and walls, peculiar rumours brought by their neighbours and acquaintances. Some blamed the mutants for robbing their shops and flats.

I sent a heads-on to the Arbites Proctor of the district, exchanged a few brief notes with Tamias who'd left the Stumblebum to have a stroll along a remaining pub street in the middle levels. The owl would have been the safest way to travel down but it would draw even more attention than the genestealer car from the picts. After a few calls the Prefectus finally found us an Enforcer van designed for special operations in the underhive. A shabby bolt bucket with chipped paint and a delivery company logo on the cab, it had bulletproof windows and armoured sides. The cargo body let us avoid questions about Angel and Fluffster.

Uncle took the driver seat, I sat next to him with the pistol in the pocket and the chainsword under my feet, covered with a floor rug. His own gun and a few frag and smoke grenades were hidden in a weapon locker between the seats.

Panaque pulled a sad face before going to the body. 'Why isn't there a third seat? Just boring to sit in a closed box instead of staring at the city fun.'

'There'll be fun only after we arrive,' I said. 'Refresh your knowledge about the genestealers or just have a hearty chat with the others. We'll buy you something to chew on the way.'

We rolled through a poorly lit tunnel that joined the Administratum complex and the downtown district and turned to a broad avenue, side by side with an exact copy of our car. Offices and malls stood in ruins, rainwater pooled in shell craters. People shunned the city center streets I had seen crowded and festive on the picts. A few ragged teens looked out of a broken window of a deserted hotel. One of them hurled a chunk of glass at the other van but missed. An Enforcer patrol car showed up from a sidestreet, and they darted back into the dark rooms.

The navigator program announced another turn. Uncle drove through a narrow street, crossed a bridge that arched over the canal, and we headed down along the riverfront. Dark clouds rushed by over our heads, sickly trees on the boardwalk swayed back and forth under the wind. A few passers-by ran across the road, covering their heads from the first raindrops. The moss-green surface of the canal rippled, a pack of gulls took wing from the parapet.

'If I was a real paranoid, I'd say the sorcerer is watching us.' I chuckled pointing at the birds who were circling over the car.

'They're after the food that couriers carry in vans like the ours,' Uncle grunted. 'Let's choose a more cheerful thing to talk about, lassie.'

As we were getting far from the center, the streets came alive. Some of the districts were almost intact. Elderly citizens were having their morning cup of tea in small diners with bright neon letters over the windows. A bus pulled to a stop, and a crowd of children ran out opening colourful umbrellas.

Only once in a while we passed by a damaged building or a crater. After a few more miles down, I saw the first genestealer emblem. A clumsy copy scribbled on a storehouse fence by some drunkard as a stupid prank, it still gave me chills. The yards were smaller, trashed sidestreets looked abandoned even though there were no signs of destruction. Twenty-thirty dark windows for every one lit.

I reached for my vox bead. 'Proctor, do you copy? We're five miles away from the presumed infestation area.'

A few beeps, and the Arbitrator's husky voice replied, 'On the spot with a suppression squad in our best wargear, ma'am. Honestly, we haven't noticed any fresh traces of alien or mutant presence. The local shop owners write tons of petitions to the Administratum. They blame the genestealers to make the officials pay a compensation for their goods they'd sold on the black market.'

'Sounds optimistic but we have to check the area first. Be ready to summon the rest.'

'Everyone's in full combat readiness. But for the enforcer cadres… I suppose you'd better give them orders in your own name. You know the tense relations between the Adeptus Arbites and planetary police forces.'

Uncle drove under a city railway bridge that connected two upper levels of living blocks. Next to a crossroads where a glazed gallery led down to the boardwalk, I noticed a small convenience store. Couriers often buy food in shops like that, so the manager would feel at ease to chat about the latest news.

I took a courier company badge from the glove box, gave another one to Uncle. On the parking there was an only abandoned car with broken windows. I climbed the slippery steps. A woman with a full bag of dairy and vegetables that went out of the glass doors paid no attention to the two shabby delivery servicemen.

The manager was loitering between rows of shelves, checking security cameras. He waved his hand at the entry chime.

'You're welcome. Look up the fresh ready meals to the right. What's up in the city?'

'Driving around since daybreak,' Uncle answered. 'A good chance to earn some cash for me and niece.'

The manager chuckled. 'That's the fellow who finds profit in the mess around. Salesmen from the center dropped their prices, and the locals took out their savings for the rainy day.'

'These are the rainy days in all senses.' I smiled back.

'Not afraid of the mutants there, girl?' he said when I brought a lunchbox and a package of sliced fruit to the cash desk.

'They tell creepy tales about them. Have you seen any? I heard they rob stores.'

He flinched. 'The Emperor's merciful. A gang burglared a store two blocks away from here. Some crazy mobsters. But the manager is gonna write to the Administratum. Let the fat bastards open their wallets.'

'The center's got hit by bombs,' Uncle said.

'I don't believe the big dogs died. Just skedaddled from the planet with our money. And the rest keeps on telling us these sad tales so that we felt sorry and put up with another tax surge. I've got under half the usual customers now. In less than a month after the rumours and the attacks. In a district with the least damage. All huddled in their flats, scared by their own shadow.'

'I was a soldier in the Guard years ago. Seen much worse monsters.' Uncle activated his microchip ring to pay for our food.

The manager pointed at the booze shelves with a smirk. 'I'd advise you a bottle of liquid courage, just in case.'

'Man, I'm driving.'

'Cops are understanding here. They're tipsy all the time when the locals call them to investigate another abandoned house with a scary sign.'

'Are there many mobsters hanging around?' I asked.

'Not at daytime,' said the manager. 'But you'd better leave the district before dark. Wonder why those mutants haven't eaten them yet.'

I stuffed the sandwiches, lunch boxes and sliced fruit into a plastic bag. The rain had only grown stronger. In the minute it took us to reach the van, I was drenched like after a swim in the canal.

'Are we there?' Panaque put his head through an opening in the partition between the cabin and the body. 'Time to turn up the heat!'

'First, try to overcome this.' Uncle handed him the package with a lunchbox and a sandwich. 'Your appetite would make genestealers envious.'

Rain was pattering on the cab roof as we were driving deeper into the densely built district. The boardwalk had ended. A torrent of waste water was rushing towards the flood gate downhill, rumbling inside a long rockcrete tunnel. Yellow street lamps never went off where dim daylight didn't reach enclosed yards and narrow roads.

Emblems, sinister emblems everywhere. Drawn in dried blood on grey rockcrete. No one had removed them. It was barely noon but the streets were deserted like it was the middle of the night. One or two lit windows for a whole block. Parked cars all smashed and covered with mud.

A large black car stood out among cheap bolt buckets. A familiar model. Its cab and roof molten and charred, the fake eagle from the pict remained intact. I closed my eyes and reached out. A faint breeze with a faded note of musk brushed against my mind and died out. A trail once strong, but too old to catch.

A sudden squeal of brakes pulled me out of the psyker trance. The van shivered.

'A damn madman!' Uncle bellowed.

Someone started banging on the body with desperate cusses.

'Drunk or nuts?' Uncle rolled down his window. 'Popped out of nowhere, crazy fast.'

The stranger ran up to the cab on shaky legs. Not a genestealer. An unremarkable slum man in dirty clothes. He leaned down and picked up an empty bottle from the kerb.

'C-c-come out, b-b-bastard!' He hiccuped and swung the bottle.

'Bugger off or we'll call the cops!' I shouted. 'We've to deliver this damn order!'

The bottle broke to splinters. The man yelled an indistinct curse, brandishing the bottleneck. For a moment he froze up before the cab but then put his other hand into his pocket.

'Holy crap, a grenade.' Uncle whistled.

'Probably stolen from the genestealers,' I said. 'I have a way to scare the shit outta him.'

'Aye, let's show him the rosette!' Panaque interfered.

'He'll blow us up in fear,' said Uncle.

The Will. All that remains. I clenched my fingers to concentrate. 'Put it back. Put it back and get away.'

He stared at the van with his mouth gaping. His fingers clutched the grenade but he didn't move.

'Get away,' I repeated the order.

Bright white light fell on the madman. Another car stopped at the closest corner. An Enforcer patrol. A gun barrel appeared from the half-open window.

'Hands up!'

The madman didn't move, stunned by the psychic contact.

I looked out of my window. 'He's probably stoned.'

'None of your business,' the officer answered from the car. 'Prepare the license and the waybill for the check.'

I rolled the glass down and put through my hand with the rosette. A muffled cuss and a cough reached my ears. In a second the officer jumped out of the car.

'Waiting for the orders, ma'am!'

'First, take the grenade from the man while he's gaping at us. Then, send a message to your department. I need the Enforcers to watch over the area around the flood gate. There might be groups of mutants trying to break through to the upper districts.'

We continued the way into the maze of steep passages between tall rockcrete walls. Living blocks gave way to sewage treatment facilities. Fully automated and sealed away from intruders, they hadn't ceased the usual work after the calamities.

Uncle stopped the car before a mauled metal door in the wall of the tunnel. Pools of blood had dried in potholes under a canopy at the entrance.

I got out first to examine the broken seal on the lock. Bloody fingerprints on the lock didn't look human.

'The High Inquisitor showed us similar fingerprints. We had to identify genestealers among hundreds of fingers.' Panaque left the van without my sign, eager to sate his curiosity and boast his experience. 'I'm sure they broke it from the inside.'

'A surprising discovery,' Fluffster grunted. He took a few tools out of his pouch and carefully scraped off a blood drop. 'Curious.' The report file opened on the screen of his slate. 'Purestrain hybrids. Most likely, a clash with local mobsters. About three weeks ago.'

He went on studying the door surface.

'How fresh are the newest prints?' I asked.

'It depends. If we talk about genestealers, the same three weeks. But there are a few human traces as well. Left no earlier than yesterday.'

'So the mutants decided to stop using this exit.'

'But their food thought otherwise,' Panaque said with a chuckle.

Uncle frowned. 'Take care so that they don't snack on you, boy.'

'That's why I've got a cool gun.' Panaque closed one eye and took aim at the door, mimicking action movie stars.

'Did your mentor often take you out for combat raids?' I said.

Panaque lowered the weapon. 'Not really. When in Ordo Xenos, I accompanied the High Inquisitor to a few crime scenes. I was an apprentice of his sage acolyte then. The old man was always scolding me. He called me brainless so often I printed the results of my latest EEG and made it the wallpaper of his working cogitator.'

'What about the Ordo Machinum then?'

'The High Inquisitor's enginseer discovered I had technical talents. He was a normal guy and taught me a few tricks for weapon management and repair. My late mentor needed educated Progena acolytes for a mission on Colomesus so I was transferred to Ordo Machinum. Most of his people were sour guys and gals so I monopolized the social interactions.'

'How did you miss rumours of the rebellion then?'

He sighed. 'I heard about the fishy schemes in the upper echelons. For a few times, from different people. When I described all risks and possibilities to my mentor, he got angry with me. He said I needed to check the facts before distracting him from his own investigations. But then cultists appeared in the vicinity. The rebellion broke out on that very night.'

The door creaked open. A strong stench of damp and decay hit my nose. Angel, bolter in hand, claws activated, made a brisk step into the dark.

Sloshing through streams of wastewater, we moved forth in a single-file. Flashlight beams picked out beast jaws carved in moldy rockcrete. Even layers of old rust on pipes looked like bloodstains in the lamplight.

My boot slipped on a broken tile, and I grabbed a hanging bundle of cables to stay upright. The headlamp on my hat slipped aside. Right at my feet, in a deep gutter along the wall, brown water was running over piles of picked bones. Human bones.

A note of musk in the draught I could hardly catch. Concentrated on the psychic background, I followed Angel deeper into the maw of the Devourer's lair. A canary down the mine, he would sense the proximity of the mutants before any of us. Blood is drawn to blood. Beast to beast. As long as his tense aura stays calm, we're safe.

'What do you feel now?' I asked him by vox.

His voice sounded only a bit nervous. 'The call of my duty. To the Emperor, my Chapter and you.'

'And your morning blood wrath?'

'I must fight it. Even the slightest sparks. Not because the indoctrination tells me. Because I need to grow strong before the times of trial.'

'Glad to hear that your serious attitude has got manly notes.'

New notes popped up in the psychic white noise. A level below. Sentient beings. The remaining aura of the cult didn't let me have a closer look. Just lights flickering in the distance. My heart pounding, I sent our coordinates to the Proctor. A dozen steps forward, a rusty ladder led down into a dark chasm.

Angel stopped before the bent fence scanning the lower corridors. Trickles of congealed mutant blood were black against the rust. I waited until he went down the shaky steps and started descending. The lights were glowing brighter as I came closer. Not too many of them. Most likely, guards or scouts left to warn the cult. We had to hold on till the arrival of the Arbites.

'Let's catch them by surprise,' I whispered into the vox. 'Try to catch one alive.'

'They're in a control chamber. Fifty meters to the left,' Angel said back.

Even jolly Panaque clenched his jaws and frowned. The fourth combat in his life.

I gave him a friendly smile. 'At least, you've already seen their foul kind.'

'So I'm well aware of the risks.'

We came so close I heard their muffled voices from behind the walls. Sister slowed down, both hands on the throttle of her Eviscerator. I slipped behind Angel as he swung his claws and rushed to the chamber.

A yell of horror echoed in the corridors. Angel stopped abruptly.

'Good Emperor, that's not his goon! Not the frigging Tyranids!' a human voice shouted.

The floor in the chamber was smeared with dried genestealer waste. Bones lay all over the metal plates. Control panels had been dragged to the corner to build a clumsy hideout. Ragged, disheveled men and women huddled inside, covering their eyes from the light. Hair, I breathed a sigh of relief. Human faces of natural coloring. No extra hands.

Panaque put his flashlight beam on the strangers. 'They look like someone way too familiar.' He pulled at the greasy dreadlocks of the closest hobo. 'To check up for sure.'

'He himself told us to bugger off!' One of them cried out.

Dirty but once glam clothes. Tattoos of leopard heads and Chaos Stars.

'The cultists that had driven me to the ruins on Colomesus just before Uncle Ruy found me. But these ones are too scared to fire their guns.'

'Are you the Pirate King's men?' I showed them my rosette.

'Not anymore,' the same man answered. A typical sailor from a rogue trader ship, he had peculiar augmetics on his face and right hand but his garbs were torn and covered in dried blood. 'He's got a better crew.' Even the rosette had left them undisturbed. They had seen worse shit than an unexpected visit from the Inquisition, and I had to find out the details.

'You've arrived to the city on the Biruang?' My retinue surrounded the hideout, holding the runaways at gunpoint. 'If you give me honest answers, I'll be merciful.'

'The King chose sailors from the Macan Kumbang before the trip. Everyone volunteered. We couldn't stand that anymore.' A few teens in the distant corner gave out loud sobs.

'Beasts, damn beasts,' a shivering woman said, her face still covered with her scarf. 'They kept on coming until they occupied all the lower decks. We tried to drive them out. But they ate everyone who went down. And the meat… It was growing over the walls. Meat and scales.'

'The reek was so strong we had to wear gas masks,' said the man. 'Those left on board cried curses at us. When the Biruang stopped over the city, we were ready to start a mutiny. We hadn't known that before… The King took his Headsman along. To try a new poison on us.'

'Did he notice the genestealer cult?' I asked.

'The cult noticed him. When the survivors gathered on the bridge, too angry to be afraid…'

'He was there, in his horrid swollen suit,' the woman went on. 'He burst out laughing. The baldies will serve better than you, so bugger off, he bellowed. We saw insect fiends jumping up to the platforms. So we ran away, as fast as we could.'

'To the shuttles,' said the man. 'Then… They swarmed the docking decks. They paid us no attention. A living river of purple-skinned, nasty scum that darted from their own shuttles to the lower part of the ship. They carried in a giant deformed monster in a palanquin of iron and gold. We ran hard on our asses until we found refuge in these tunnels. Where the mutants used to live.'

'Have you seen any?' I said.

'They left to the last one. But the citizens are still scared. They won't dare to look for us here. Only one man will…'

'Hope he's still busy with his poison-brewing business,' said another man.

I frowned at the guess. 'The Headsman's in town now?'

'The King sent him to test the poison in the hive after the bombings. We should have joined the others who went to the biggest city.'

'So listen. Keep calm, find a job, at least in the underhive. I won't do you harm unless you draw too much attention of local cops. Get ready for another visit if we don't find the Headsman quickly enough.' I found the Proctor's vox channel. 'Proctor, all-clear. Just a band of hobos who have settled in the abandoned lair. They ensured me the genestealers have all left. Wait until I get the presumed coordinates of the Patriarchs former lair.'

'Do you believe them, Fluffster?' I asked him when we left the chamber.

He narrowed his eyes. 'The Panther's usual way of recruiting unusual forces.'

'His apothecary is way more important now. Let us finish some formalities and proceed to the next task.' I sent the coordinates of the lair to the microchip of my cyber-moth. The metal insect's wings flashed in the lamplight, and it vanished in the depths of the maze.


	12. Episode 2 Chapter 3

Waiting for the picts, I wiped rusty drops off a pipe section at the wall and sat down. The runaways were whispering in their chamber but the sound of dripping water nearly swallowed their voices. I leaned on the wall watching my retinue's attempts to relax a bit. Panaque, cheerful as always, took out the remains of his lunchbox. The peaceful outcome of the encounter hadn't left him disappointed. I admitted I shared his feelings. Had I been a fierce warmonger, we'd have already rotten in a nameless grave years ago. So many shiny new Inquisitors rush to combat with a few cheap hired guns as if they've got a big army and a few spare lives.

I winked to the 'little ones' who were listening to Panaque's chattering. 'Sister, Angel, thank you for leaving out the usual accusations of heresy.'

Sister scratched her forehead. She thought for a few seconds before answering. 'I was ready to see mutants who had betrayed the Emperor. Those men used to serve a foul traitor, but… Maybe even against their will, they called out to Him, not to daemons. So let Him guide them.'

'A balanced opinion. As long as they don't jump in our faces with knives and guns.'

I stopped and put my finger to my lips. There was someone coming from the passage. Lame steps splashing through puddles. The sailor with augmetics hobbled into the room, holding to the wall cables. His right leg, bandaged with dirty rags, failed him when his fingers slipped off the wet surface. Uncle caught him and sat him down on the pipes.

'Forgot to tell us something, old fellow?'

'Gonna show you to the lair if you wish. There are traps and pits in numbers on the way.'

'Hard to do with your leg.'

'The others are scared shitless by just a thought about going there. But you should have some drugs to mend my shank. And a few pennies as a reward.' He smirked and nodded.

'Fine,' I said. 'Sister, up to you.'

To my relief, she obeyed without pretensions. While she was fussing over the wound, I stepped closer to the exit looking into the dark. Finally, a notification lit up on the screen of my dataslate. The moth made a circle under the ceiling and landed on the sleeve of my coat. 'Data download initiated. Vid-log to be ready for watching in five seconds.

I fast-forwarded through the long dim shoots of deserted passages to the final goal. It was an empty reservoir deep in the sewers, at the borders of the underhive 'living districts'. Blurred outlines of walls and columns with waste buildups up to the vaults around an abominable nest made of human bones.

'Not a pleasant place to visit, but worth taking a few picts for Lord Kryptopterus and his buddies.' I closed the window and put the slate back in the pouch.

Stairways that led down to the reservoir had turned to slopes of dried crap. Covering my nose from the stench, I descended to the bone halls of the Patriarch. His servant-scions had vanished long ago, as the runaways had said. Smashed skulls and gnawed body remains were scattered all over the waste-covered floor. The runaway stepped over a torn genestealer arm and frowned in disgust.

Fluffster stopped to take a pict of the nest. 'Patriarchs leave their lairs only if a Hive Fleet is coming to the system. There are no fleets in this sector or any of the nearest ones. But this one couldn't resist the call.' His voice sounded confused. A rare occasion for a man of his experience. There were questions to ask that he wouldn't answer anyway. 'I'll warn Lord Mentor about the Biruang today. There's nothing more to be seen here.'

'But for the Headsman,' I said and turned to the runaway. 'Has he been to the sewers?'

'No idea, ma'am. The King sent him to the surface with two mutant guards, as always. They are like… dragged to the barge and other ships by some unknown force. They make sure the Headsman comes back.'

I shook my head. 'Well, he's always been kinda lazy but he didn't feel like running away from the jolly decks of the barge. With all those drinking stalls for sailors and scoundrels from nearby sectors.'

He muttered a cuss and sighed. 'There's been ages since we lived like that. After the madman went to that world-ship of the knife-ears, things got crazy. You've already heard that. Purple meat started growing everywhere. The four-armed mutants and other beasts were shitting over the tents and tables on the bridge. Eaters got eaten. First the Headsman was catching mutants for his lab. Then he gave up and locked himself in his wing.'

The Proctor appeared in the doorway, followed by his suppression squad. The runaway stuttered and pulled his torn cloak over the leopard tattoo on his chest.

'My lady, we are relieved to find out there are no mutants left. Let me send the picts to the city government. The hive will transfer to the usual level of safety since tomorrow.'

'Officially,' I said. 'There's another threat to the city. A saboteur from a traitor marine legion. With genestealer guards, if our reconnaissance is true. Going to poison the citizens.'

To his credit, he showed self-possession. 'Rotten. Please, not a single word to the Prefectus. Between us, he doesn't seem fit for the duties of a Mayor.'

'The main thing is to avoid panic. We need undercover overwatch everywhere near water extraction plants.'

'There's the main one in the suburban area.' He showed me a green spot on the map where a large river ran down out of the mountains through hills and cottage villages. 'Remained intact after the assaults.'

'Likely because the traitor leader was planning to test the poison.'

The Proctor put red marks around the plant. 'I'll send detectives to the tent hospital and the nearby villages. They'll wait for your orders. But for the Canoness…' He scratched his cheek. 'Up to you to decide, whether to warn her.'

Sister shuddered when he mentioned her former superior. An uneasy meeting ahead. Way uneasier for me, like the reunion of the Bloodied. Escapism that will leave me without trusted retinue one day. Fluffster gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder.

'A working plan, Proctor,' I said. 'You may proceed while I need some time here to interrogate the runaways.'

'I might lend you a chastener, if you wish.'

'Thanks, but not now. I'll keep it in mind for the future.'

I left the abandoned lair and felt relieved to breathe in the damp air of the upper passages. The runaway hurried back to the shelter as if the arbitrators were to return for him in no time. Only when we reached the chamber, he spoke to me.

'I thought we'd told you everything. Why question us?'

'Had to say that out of form. The last commission, and we part ways. Here's a number. If the Headsman contacts you in any way, send me a few random emojis. But remember, your King is far away while the Imperial Justice will finish you if you betray us.'

'Down with the friggin King,' the runaway growled. 'Let his dearest baldies care for him.'

It was still raining when we climbed up to the empty street. Small squares of grey sky over the enclosed yards had turned dark blue by nightfall. The armoured car of the Arbites was parked next to our van.

The Proctor was smoking under a street lamp rocking under the wind. At the sight of my retinue he puffed out the last ring of smoke and tossed the cig butt to a pool of rainwater.

'I've already traced the shortest route, ma'am. We'll be there by midnight.'

As Uncle was driving through the twisted streets of the hive outskirts, I sat back, struggling with drowse. A bad sign, to get tired that quickly. I had to instruct Sister, to share some tips with Panaque before we arrived. But the chattering from the body grew more and more remote. My thoughts tangled. Just for a second, I closed my eyes.

It was raining. Alone among the vast expanse, I walked forth, unaware where to go. Purple and pink lupines were swaying under a soft breeze, and a wistful scent of roses lingered in the air. A blurred human shape showed through the grey haze in the distance. Imudon. A bout of sudden fear made me freeze on the spot. Then other memories popped up. He's not an enemy. Not anymore. I speed up, trying to overtake him. Despite my struggles, the silhouette is moving away. A second, and he will vanish in the rain.

'Lassie, we're here.' Uncle's voice from afar startled me. The van wasn't moving. The wind blowing through the half-open window smelled of damp earth and wet leaves.

'I wish you had waken me up earlier.' I rubbed my eyes, still haunted by the eerie dream.

'You needed a couple hours of rest. Look out, it's almost like our house on Calobotrya.'

I got out and made a few steps on numb legs. Here, it was real spring we hadn't seen in the concrete maze of the city. Fresh leaves were rustling over my head. Long vines of early roses were climbing over the tall brick fence, and a few bone-white flowers had already opened among the dark foliage. I felt their familiar sweet scent when the wind blew again.

'I wonder whether they have lupines there,' I said.

Bright white walls of a house showed through the trees. Larger, not as cozy as the countryside cottage where we had spent the vacations, it was one of castle-like mansions that officials and merchants build for both boasting and guarding their wealth. I sighed recalling the pompous mansion of long-dead Prefectus Wycke where the cafe girl in a pink dress had been eavesdropping under the cabinet door. Here, the garden was older, a dark grove of blood oaks and evergreens without unnecessary decorations. A path of mossy bricks led to the house past green flowerbeds. I saw a few hydrangeas at the back wall, but there were only leaves.

Panaque waved to me from the porch. 'A fancy cubbyhole. Real paradise after the Ordo quarters and days in the van with the guerrillas. Three stores and a garden.'

The door opened, and the Proctor walked down the stairs, lighting another cigarette. 'Ma'am, you're welcome. Our intelligencer operatives use this house as a base for undercover operations. One of the vital city areas, more crime and even cults than most can imagine. You're probably aware of the statistics.'

'I hope my rosette works along with the systems,' I said.

'Sure. Our late Senioris who commissioned it was an old-school man with much respect for the Ordos. Take your time. The Sisters' hospital is at the crossroads, next turn to the right from the village gates. I guess it would be better to pay them a visit tomorrow, if you wish. They're still up to the eye in work, too many heavy injuries after the bombings. A week ago, wounded soldiers and civilians arrived from the mountains.'

I nodded from time to time, too weary to interrupt his eloquence. Only when he stopped to take a whiff, I reminded him, 'Sir, tomorrow morning, you should make an official announcement about the vanquished threat of mutants and so on. Through all available media. I expect the Headsman to pop up in a few days after the end of the fuss.'

The next morning was colder than yesterday but the rain had stopped, and even spots of orange sunlight broke through the thinning clouds. Trying to wake up, I looked at the room through half-closed eyelids. My old room in my parents' mansion. I must be still dreaming. The illusion lasted for a few seconds. Now, I'm the inquisitor with a rent house.

Despite nine hours of sleep, my headache had only grown worse. I lay on my back for some time, staring up at the silvery sky in the ceiling window. But for the bad luck, we could still live together. They didn't want me to follow in their footsteps. For my own safety, like all parents think. Uncle wants a home, the little ones miss the only home they used to have before need drove them to our owl. Only Fluffster, our restless vagrant, is ready to put everything at stake for the profit of his shady deals. I'm more like him, and has always been, during all the cozy years in the convent.

Screw all stupid hopes and dreams. That's the only life I'll ever have until the close end of days.

I got up abruptly, pulled on my tunic and pants. After breakfast, a bit cheered by jolly talks, I went out to the verandah. The inbox was empty. City news praised the expulsion of vile mutants in flashy expressions that would make a pulp fiction author blush. I took my hat from the rack and came back to my friends who were chatting in the big guestroom.

'Let's stretch our legs and have a walk to the hospital. I guess someone is looking forward to a hearty reunion.'

Sister bit her lip and cracked a crooked smile. 'Volentia… Please, don't think that I'm disobeying your order. But… I'm ashamed to stand before Mother Canoness and the Sisters. They entrusted novices to me, and I let them die. I failed my vows I'd taken before the Emperor's most holy visage. Sure, they won't tell me anything, for their kindness, but a sinner doesn't deserve to be among the righteous.'

It would be safer to let her stay, I thought. Safer for me. Less temptation to leave the retinue for the old ways. But she'll cry for hours and blame herself for cowardice. I looked at Fluffster. He should know the right way.

He shook his head. 'Sister, it's quite disrespectful to the Emperor to say so. There's no sin so grave He cannot pardon. He returned Aphedron and Imudon to the ranks of the faithful.'

She looked down to the floor. 'I swore there would be no return until my sins were redeemed.'

'Don't you make the decision for the Sisters. And for Him.' He put his paw around her shoulders, smiling from under his red hood.

'Even if they aren't so glad, the word of Terran agents…' I whispered into his ear when she left the room, but he interrupted me.

'You think about the profit of your work, not about those people who provide it. Aye, eternal children are comfortable. When you can coax them into working for candy.'

'That was you who told me they wouldn't grow up anyway.'

'Hard times are good for growing up. Give your friends a chance.'

I decided to take Panaque and Uncle along with Sister. A friendly company that will win at least some trust. I hoped our diplomatic skills would help me bargain Sister's presence in my team until the war with the Panther is over. Till Doomsday, in all senses.

There were cars in the underground garage but I needed a countryside walk to clear up my head. At noon the clouds parted. Patches of shining blue spread over the green hills around. Snow-capped mountain peaks showed up through the spring haze on the horizon. A paved path led from the village to the riverbank overgrown with silvery willows. There was a shorter way across the highway but I took a little detour along the river.

The area was as quiet and deserted as the lower districts. There had been many lit windows in the village last night but the dwellers preferred to stay inside the fortified gates. We met an elderly couple with a dog on the path. When we reached a wooden bridge, a girl hurried past us with a supermarket bag in hand. I stopped atop the bridge in the sunlight and leaned over to look at the sparkling water. Calm nature we won't see often in near future.

Inflated hospital tents were hidden in the shadow of old trees on a hill slope. We walked around the foothill where last piles of snow were melting on the bottom of a deep ravine. Sister slowed down, her trembling hands clasped on her chest, but sparks of joy shone through the fear and guilt that overcast her soul-light. I sent her a wordless cheer. She smiled with effort, looking at the Sororitas lilies on the tent roofs.

'Haven't seen these for so long,' she whispered.

I recalled the morning wake in the mansion. 'Exciting to visit the old home, isn't it? Just keep your chin up. You've served the Emperor well, and I'm gonna praise you before the Canoness.'

A bored novice Sister was standing on guard at a hedgerow that separated the slope from the walking paths of the riverfront. She gladly turned her head to the sound of our steps and pulled a welcoming smile.

'Lady Inquisitor, we have got a message from the Proctor. Mother Canoness is waiting for you. Let me escort you to the tent of the newly arrived. She is sorry to talk to you in the hospital tent but the wounded need her qualified care.' She saw the Repentia, and her eyes widened. 'But he didn't say about a fellow Sororita visiting us.'

Panaque greeted her with a theatrical bow and took embarrassed Sister by the hand before she could hide behind our backs.

'We all hope Sister Gallina's deeds and virtue are remembered in the Order.'

The novice threw up her hands. 'We are praying for her at every service, sir! I entered the ranks of the Order before you had taken your latest vows, Sister Gallina, but Mother Canoness and Mothers Almonesses praise your devotion. May the Emperor watch over you on the holy path of sacrifice.'

Blushing, Sister pulled her hood over her eyes and nose. 'May His blessing be upon you and the whole Order.'

'Is it fine to leave the place virtually unguarded, Sister?' Uncle asked the novice as we were walking between the tents. 'The mutants are gone but there are other threats.'

She folded her hands in the sign of the Aquila. 'The Emperor protects us from all enemies. Before yesterday, pious men of the Arbites were patrolling the area. But since today, we can thank Him for delivering us from the xenos menace.'

She led us to a big tent in the quiet part of the camp under the trees. A sharp smell of medicaments stung my nostrils when she pulled aside the curtain at the entrance. I took off my hat and put on a white robe and a face mask handed by another novice. Sisters clad in white and blue of the Order were checking data screens over the rows of beds.

A Curia Advance got up from a bedside chair. The wounded guardsman she was examining lay flat on life support, his head bandaged all over. She put her finger to her lips.

'Please, my lady, don't speak aloud here. Many of the patients are sleeping after surgery. Horrible injuries. This one was doused in burning fuel. Low chances of recovery but we will do our best. Every life of an Imperial citizen is precious.'

'Thank you for your self-sacrificing work, Sister,' I whispered back.

'Thank you for combating those horrors, Inquisitor. Mother Hyacintha will meet you once the surgery is over. An urgent case, septicemia caused by genestealer venom.'

A dense sheet of tarp separated the ward from the operating room. A sat down on a stool, struggling with nausea. Medical stuff gave me chills since the years in the underhives. I could put up with the cozy infirmary of the convent where I had spent a few days a year with trivial flu, but all those clinics cried about weakness, pain and forced idleness. Miserable deaths one is unable to prevent. From my first battle wounds treated in slum sick bays till the Headsman's lab, my aversion was only growing stronger.

'She taught me to handle life support machinery years ago.' Sister was watching the Curia's accurate ministrations. 'I wish I could help too.'

The sheet moved, and two Sisters carried out a guardsman still unconscious under anesthesia. A tiny old woman in bloodied scrubs looked out of the room. On seeing us she pulled the surgical mask down to her chin. Her kindly face had dried up since our last meeting, and I barely recognized her.

'Sorry for making you wait, my lady,' said Canoness Hyacintha. 'A few minutes, and I'll invite you to our improvised doctor's lounge.'

Her assistant showed us to a small nook in the back corner of the operation room, separated by a screen with an emblem of the Order. Hyacintha, already in her casual robes, was pouring hot water into a teapot on a folding table. The past months had turned the plump lively woman into a shadow of herself. Another assistant was drowsing on a stool, leaned back to the tent wall.

'My dears.' She took a box of cookies from a wall shelf. 'Gallina, my child. So glad to welcome you back.'

Sister pressed both hands to her chest. A tear rolled down her cheek. 'I fought against the foes of the Imperium. To seek redemption for the novices' deaths. I should have saved them. Or die with them.'

Hyacintha poured steaming tea into a cup and put it on the table before Sister. 'I've known you since you were a little girl, Gallina. Listen to my words. The drill abbesses praised your compassion and courage when I visited the Schola looking for potential novices. You were the best by the time of your graduation. You've served the Order with all proficiency and devotion. New novices need elder Sisters to teach and encourage them.'

Sister grasped the cup with both hands, her face bright red. 'You mean… my sins can be forgiven?'

'Do you want back to the Order, Gallina? It depends on your decision. Either by Lady Volentia's side or here, you still serve Him.'

I clenched my fingers. That was the matter she had to settle by herself, despite my professional ambitions. Hyacintha nodded to me with a gentle smile.

'Lady Volentia,' Sister muttered after a minute of confused silence. 'I loved the time spent in the retinue. You're a great superior. The ours are all great friends. But…' She choked on her tea and started coughing.

'Let Gallina give it a thought, my lady,' said Hyacintha. 'Sorry again for clearing this out before our talk.'

'I've just had time to ponder over that a bit, Mother Canoness,' I said. 'It's really been a while. Everything is out of order since the start of the Black Crusade. I thought I was used to blood and all that but hospitals still make my bowels shrivel.'

'True, it's no easy job to tend to the countless wounded soldiers and civilians. But, with the Emperor's protection, we're going on. We were heading to the Cadian battlefields but this planet needed our help. Our sincere gratitude to you and the Arbites to have saved us from mutant hordes.'

I chose words with caution. 'Well, reality is kinda more complicated. I'd advise you to watch out for a few more days. The others shouldn't know that, but there's a traitor poisoner hiding in the vicinity.'

She sighed. 'My lady, that was cruel and unwise to reassure civilians that all threats had been vanquished.' Her bravery to argue with an inquisitor did her credit.

'Mother, it's safer than you think. He'd lain low until the Arbites withdrew the patrols from the extraction plants. I bet he'll come out very soon. The Proctor has sent undercover operatives both to the plant and the hospital. Have any new civilian volunteers arrived today?'

'If you fail, the city is doomed.'

'I only ask for your prayers.'

The Curia put her head into the room. 'Mother, the sergeant needs immediate surgery. The tumor is regrowing at shocking speed.'

'Just another busy day.' Hyacintha got up, patted the sleeping assistant on the shoulder. 'Lophura, dear, let's do some work. Muscaria needs a bit of rest after a sleepless night.'

The Curia frowned. 'Mother, you haven't shut your eyes for two days. For your age, it's too risky. I remember how to operate on warp-infused tumors.'

'Thanks for your care, Sister. Up to you to check other tainted wounds in the ward and prepare the lieutenant for her second planned surgery.'

Sister blinked, blushing again. 'It might be offensive for a Repentia to ask that… But, Mother, maybe I can join you and the Sisters for a while?'

Hyacintha took fresh scrubs from a container in the corner and looked at me. I nodded. 'As long as the ours are in good health.'

'We all can assist you,' Panaque suddenly suggested.

My bowels reacted with a bout of sickness. Ashamed of the unwanted weakness, I activated the bank app on my dataslate. 'If you ever need funds for food, other supplies…'

Hyacintha shook her head. 'No, no, my lady. The city officials give us everything we ask. But, if you don't mind, there are many recovering patients in the first tent to the right from the entrance. They would be glad to hear news from the bigger world.'

I hadn't planned to spend too much time in the hospital but then stayed till sundown, talking to the patients and laughing to jokes of Uncle and Panaque. My rosette hidden well from their eyes, the guardsmen were eager to share tales of mountain fights they wouldn't dare to tell to an Ordo operative.

'An advantage of looking like ordinary people, not surly inquisitors from posters,' I said on the way back. 'Finally there's one thing your mentors couldn't teach you, boy. How to live and work with normal folks.'

Panaque grinned from ear to ear. 'The guerrillas count as well. But that was an extraordinary adventure.'

'There's another thing you should have noticed in their stories.'

He scratched his head. 'Well, the despair of the attackers. As if they were in a hurry to loot the cities. The Panther had blown up all trading and Navy ships over Hive Primaris. So the runaway cultists couldn't escape the planet from the richest hive.'

'Something else.'

He just shrugged his shoulders.

'The soldiers talk about mutated cultists, all strong as hell, with tainted weapons. But the cultists ran in panic from the genestealers that swarm the Panther's ships. Even their gifts of Chaos are powerless.'

The next few days were relatively peaceful. Sister stayed in the hospital, only writing brief notes twice a day. Tamias, already bored by pleasures of solid ground, sent me a heads-on from the Stumblebum. I had to disappoint him. No traces of the Headsman and even his mutant honour guard had been found by the detectives. Disguised as janitors and repair servicemen, they roamed around the plants and checked the underground reservoirs.

I spent all free time in the garden, worn by everyday obnoxious dreams about my team years with my parents. They started with warm scenes of our days together but always ended with the snow-covered path and the sound of a blast behind my back. Everything went dark, and I remained alone, stuck in deep snow up to my neck.

By the end of the week, when I was already losing patience, a short message came from the number left by the Proctor. 'Good evening! Raining cats and dogs! The doc is nuts to walk both his pets.' Under the text lines there was a ciphered attachment with tracking coordinates.

I checked my laspistol and sword. A better gun from Lord Mentor's arsenals I hadn't tested yet. Two small grenades would fit in the pockets of my coat. I typed a few words to Sister and ran to the ground floor to warn the others.

It was an hour before midnight, a busy time in the city but bedtime in the countryside. Village dwellers had retreated to their cottages. Raindrops were tapping on wet roofs and leaves, street lamps were rocking under strong gusts of northern wind.

Ten minutes later we were already marching to the gate. The drowsy security guard only muttered something not even raising his head from his cup.

'They've relaxed way too soon,' Fluffster grunted.

'That's the point,' I said. 'So that our doc slipped out of his den.'

Three green points were moving along the river bank from a garage area on the other side. I sent a screenshot to Sister.

She was waiting for us on a bus stop at the crossroads, shivering in her drenched robe. We crossed the deserted highway.

'You should have taken a cape,' Uncle said.

'This is a mission of honour and redemption,' she answered with her old solemnity. 'I will charge first to win for the Emperor's glory or die as martyr.'

I had an attack strategy of my own but decided not to stop her. An only chance to overcome the old trauma. With her life at stake. There had been risks in the past but, thanks to His help, I hadn't sacrificed a friend yet. This happens too often to attach to acolytes, my mentor had taught his previous Interrogator. The path I'd never walk down if it was my will.

The main plant stood looming over the dark river. Fully autonomous, guarded by automatic systems, without a single human a hundred meters around. I stopped before a back gate in the rockcrete fence and put my rosette to the sensor screen on the lock. Twenty minutes until the enemies arrived.

My vox bead beeped. 'Ma'am, do you copy? Proctor Euphracte on the line. The squad is in, waiting for further orders.'

I scrolled down the map of the plant. 'Let's meet on the purification level.'

An elevator brought us to a large chamber with giant water tanks. Control screens flickered over a narrow metal stairway that led up to the shaded vault. I pointed at a massive pipe. 'Already processed water for the city.'

Panaque smirked. 'I can use my outstanding guerrilla skills at last.'

The Proctor appeared from a narrow door on the other side. 'Security systems down there have just reacted to the trespassers. The traitor's smart. Cut that part off from the main line before the sensors could send a notification to the control center.'

I raised my hand. 'Just in case someone is unaware. Space marines are very, I say, very tough. His armour auspexes will detect our presence in the chamber. But he'll hardly care while he's busy with the poison. Aim for the vials.' Angel turned to me, and I patted him on the vambrace. 'Brother, crawl into the manhole over there. Be ready to strike but avoid bolter fire as long as possible. Folks, take your positions.'

The Arbites, Panaque and Uncle disappeared in the shadows behind the tanks, Angel climbed the ladder. Fluffster was tapping on the panel connecting his dataslate to the systems. Only Sister was standing in the middle of the platform, her hands clutching the Eviscerator.

'Close combat here will be absurd,' I said.

'Doesn't matter,' she whispered. 'Allow me to deliver the first strike.'

'Take this,' I took one of the grenades out of my pocket. 'Sticks to armour, blows a neat hole. But don't you dare throw it at the poison canister.'

'Five minutes,' said Fluffster. 'Will watch out so that we don't drown after the shooting rampage.'

'It's a shame you cannot roast his ass with one of your wonder guns,' I said with a sigh.

Blood pounding in my temple, covering my nose and mouth with my left hand, I crouched behind a large tank with intertwined pipes and a bunch of cables. In the blinking red light of signal lamps I saw Sister huddled in the middle of the ladder.

Sounds of heavy steps came from beneath. The manhole in the floor opened with a loud screech. A metal hand with glistening vials on the wrist grabbed the edge, and a helmeted head appeared over the manhole cover. The Headsman leapt up on the platform and pulled out a large black jerrycan with a glowing panther head on the side. A blast of suffocating animal stench hit me.

Sister put her hand with the grenade out, her entire body trembling. Two four-armed humanoid shapes crawled out of the manhole. They turned their heads to the odour coming from the Headsman, licked their purple lips with long pointed tongues. He pays more attention to the genestealer guards than to my men lying in wait. I shuddered at the thought.

'Dear colleague.' He gave out a husky chuckle when he stopped at the bottom step. Sister clenched her fist, and I heard shrill beeps of the timer.

'Accursed traitor.'

'Still in a huff with me? Don't give a shit about all the wee soldiers hiding here and there. Either I do my job, or my baldie buddies will tear you up and drag me back to the damn barge.'

Sister swung with a scream. The Headsman darted back, pushed a genestealer forward. The grenade bounced off the mutant's forehead ridge and stuck to the Headsman's metal arm. There was a clap.

The animal stench mixed with a smell of burning wires and chemicals. Mauled remains of the arm were scattered all over the platform. In gusts of smoke I saw the Headsman on his knees, reaching for a glimmering vial that rolled down to the manhole. The second component to activate the poison. My crew opened fire in sync.

Sister activated her chainsword. She jumped down to the bottom steps but the agitated genestealers cut her off from the Headsman. The vial bumped into the open cover. Under frenzied gunfire the Headsman reached out with his remaining hand.

I pulled the trigger. Good Emperor, let it be a hit. A bright flash. A thin cloud of vapour rose over the shards and melted. The Headsman punched the cover, growled a muffled cuss.

Both genestealers leaned over him. They were bleeding from many wounds, one had an upper limb nearly torn off. The first covering them with return fire, the second put the Headsman on his feet and shoved him in the back.

'You have the shuttle codes,' the mutant hissed. 'Take us back to the pack. The Devouring Mother is calling us.'

A few quick moves - and the cover slammed shut above their heads. Yellow fire was running over the panel mauled by enemy shots. I stepped out, but dashed back at once. A powerful jet of water from the tank threw me to the wall, and I rolled down to the edge of the platform.


	13. Episode 2 Chapter 4

Cold water was coming down in torrents. I gripped the slippery fence and gasped for air. Sirens started howling as the chamber turned red in the light of emergency lamps. My hat fell off my head, and the jet washed it away to the lower levels. My left arm cramped up when I tried to rise.

'Fluffster, you promised to keep it safe,' I wheezed out coughing up water.

'A bit of patience,' Fluffster said from behind the pipes. 'The machinery jammed, thanks to the reckless bald gunslingers.'

Sister had climbed to the top step of the stairway, pale with cold. Her shaking hands barely held the Eviscerator. The Arbites, led by Euphracte, walked out to the middle of the platform, the waves rising up to their thighs.

'Let's swim outta here,' Panaque shouted from the shadows.

'I'm afraid the city will have to skip a morning shower,' Fluffster said. 'I'm turning off the pumps. The way down is blocked, the genestealers have damaged the big tank a level below.'

Angel's gauntlets were hammering on the cover of the ceiling manhole. I wished at least the elevators worked properly. Getting up to my tiptoes, I craned my neck to stay above the surface. Finally, the cover fell down with a loud kerplunk, hacked off by the lightning claw. Angel pulled Sister up to the next floor.

Fluffster waved his paw. 'Get to the elevator. I need a few more minutes to retake control and initiate the operation.'

The current too strong to swim in the carapace and with my chainsword, I raised my hand and fired the pistol into the air. 'Be so kind to take your boss away!'

Chest deep in water, Uncle and Panaque extended their hands. We hurried to the stairway, struggling against the current. Only when I climbed up to the hatch, the jets dried out. The lamps turned off.

'The damp outside is a desert compared to this,' Uncle grumbled checking his gun.

Fluffster shook like a wet dog and smoothed down his fur. The sealed jerrycan with the poison hung from his shoulder. 'Another adventure is over. Tomorrow I'll write to Lord Mentor about the successful completion of the case.'

'We hadn't caught the Headsman yet,' I said.

'Sister's grenade blew his hopes to get rid of the mutants. They won't let him go because he's the only man to take them to their kin. When a repair brigade arrives, they'll pick up your hat.'

'Is anyone wounded?' Uncle turned to the Arbites.

'Sorry, sorry,' Sister's voice livened up. She smiled despite the shiver. 'I'll take care in no time.'

After she had cleaned and bound a few autogun wounds, the squad marched towards the elevator. I hobbled in the rear. By all means, I should regain my authority again until the furry scoundrel decides to try his luck against the whole four-armed populace of the Macan Kumbang. If there's any authority left, of course.

Next morning I woke up to a loud-voice quarrel on the ground floor. I reached for the dataslate charging on the nightstand. Half past nine.

'Lassie knows better, you tricky rodent!' Uncle shouted. 'If she wants to stay, we'll stay. Ask her when she gets up.'

'Lord Mentor…'

Uncle interrupted Fluffster's calm reply. 'Does the word Inquisitor mean anything to you? I'd served in two retinues before Volentia got her promotion. Even that old drunkard's acolytes had at least an ounce of respect. Aphedrons-Imudons will kick the Panther's ass if they wish. If Volentia ever needs stronger troops, she'll just write to Canoness Modesta on Botia.'

'Only Lord Mentor's word allows an unsanctioned psyker with a mark carry the rosette. If you ever knew what the mark really is, you'd do your gunfight job instead of messing into the plans of His agents from Terra.'

'Because you pretend to act in His name? Is there a single proof you and your buddies aren't a bunch of swindlers like all those thieves feeding on the Palace? I can tell all I'm a miraculous survivor of the Heresy or even a Primarch in disguise.'

I ran down brushing my hair with my fingers. Despite all his intrigues, I didn't want my crew to fall apart from noisy rows. On the last flight of stairs I bumped into Panaque and nearly knocked him down.

'Morning, ma'am.' He smirked as if nothing was happening there.

'Let's calm them down.'

'My late boss was a pro at making people shit their pants. When two mercenaries started quarreling, he stared at them and said he'd have them reworked into servitors if they didn't shut up before he counted to three. But in general, he despised everyone but Skitarii.'

I sighed. 'Camaraderie has its drawbacks. Another lesson for you, being young sucks.' I clapped my hands. Angel and Sister who were sitting huddled together on the sofa, watching over the row with worried faces, turned their heads and blinked in neurotic synchrony.

'A minute of silence, friends,' I said. 'Now I see why they prefer Skitarii in Ordo Machinum.'

Uncle flinched as if in pain. 'Please, lassie, not a word about scrap-metal folks. Hope you'll have pity for an old man.'

'I'm the old man in this room,' Fluffster said. 'Too old for this shit.'

'If you mean I should put you out to pasture, I disagree,' I answered with all diplomatic friendliness I could show on a not-so-good morning.

'Lassie, your tunic's on backwards,' Uncle changed his tone all of a sudden.

I rolled my eyes. 'Uncle, you know how to ruin the pathos.'

'Volentia, even your runaway buddies haven't contacted you since the raid to the sewage,' said Fluffster. 'The heresy in the city has been purged.'

'Well, we've got the Headsman,' I said.

'I've sent a request to the Prefectus in the morning. A small warp-capable spacecraft left the orbit from the other side of the planet at night. The Devouring Mother wants her children back.'

'Wrought by her touch into her sacred shape.' The phrase left my mouth before I could recall where I'd heard it.

Angel bared his fangs in a strained grin. 'We're all hungry. In the best sense. Please.'

His bloodshot eyes stopped on me. Like in the owl over the sea where the voice of the Casbah had awakened his slumbering curse. That was the reason Lucia had forbidden me to take my crew to Iarmailt. Already breaking down from his estrangement, Angel suited the role of the Beast's successor more than the independent scoundrel the Panther had always been. No surprise if the Beast himself had been a goody-goody boy before he found out that it was more fun to be a rowdy teen.

Chewing on roasted bacon, I waited for a good moment to return to our business talk in a more cold-blooded manner. When Fluffster wiped his mouth and reached for a slice of cheese, I put my fork down on the plate.

'Folks, let's make up the course of action for the next weeks before you scatter.'

'Lord Mentor will send his answer in the afternoon,' Fluffster replied immediately.

'I'm gonna support the old-timer of our team today. Tamias will drop the owl. We're going to combat the remaining heresy until some reinforcements arrive.'

He chuckled. 'What will you tell the grumpy blank fellow?'

'You will.' I gave him a wide grin. 'Tell him we've stuck here for repairs. Something that won't arouse suspicion. And then, I'm sure, the Panther will get him busy enough to forget about our modest team for a while.'

'He keeps the marks in mind.'

I took a deep breath. A proper question came up. 'Are there any others marked like me? Lucia's dead. Imudon has got rid of it.'

'I wanted you to get to Terra and learn more,' he said wistfully. 'It took me hours of lengthy talks to persuade Lord Mentor. But you ran away.'

'That's what happens when you play on the sly.'

'Look, an Inquisitor doesn't approve undercover work.'

'I do. But when I'm the undercover agent.'

Sister who was watching the talk gave out a muffled cough and covered the lower part of her face. 'I'm sorry. But… may I spend the day with the Sisters? The patients are recovering but another pair of hands is always at use.'

'Canoness Hyacintha is waiting for your decision.'

She looked down. 'I think… I don't want to offend anyone. I value both my Order and our crew. The Emperor will show His will.'

'Let's deal with that together,' I said. 'I haven't been to church for ages. Fluffster, I promise to stop by the next Machine sanctuary. You know why. Check the owl with Angel when it lands.'

'Take your hat from the rack in the hallway,' said Fluffster. 'A worker's brought in at seven. Sadly, swimming had deformed it a bit.'

While Uncle was driving one of the cars to the hospital, I complained, 'Still feeling sorry to leave acolytes behind because of trust issues. My mentor, though, was totally fine dumping even his Interrogators.'

'When my boss planned an event like that,' Panaque said, 'I tried to hide so that he picked someone other for company. It was great when us acolytes could take a nap, and he wasn't shouting around.'

The sun had risen to the zenith. Last pools left from the rain were drying in the almost summery heat. After the heavy clouds had melted in the morning, the azure sky got dazzling clear. Hospital tents showed white and blue in fresh greenery that expanded to the shining snow-capped peaks on the horizon.

The noon service was about to begin when we walked into a tent chapel set far from the road, among blooming apple trees. Golden lilies were sparkling on the flawlessly white walls under a torrent of sunshine falling through ceiling windows, thin incense smoke rose to the vault, the tent filled with sublime fragrance. Sisters scurried to and fro, arranging flower wreaths on the holy images, lighting thin pearly candles in sand bowls of cerulean porcelain.

As countless times before, I stopped and folded my hands in the sacred sign. A stinging lump clogged my throat. It would be too much to call myself sentimental, but the fatigue of past weeks struck me at once. Troubles only the Emperor would bother to listen.

We found Canoness Hyacintha before the altar, talking to a tall priest in silver-embroidered vestments. A man older than her, he could have been a soldier in his youth, I thought looking at a long scar that crossed his temple and cheek. Hyacintha reached out and gently patted Sister's bowed head.

'We prayed to Him so that He showed us the right way. Up to you to decide whether to stay, but your time of penance is over.'

'Do I really…' Sister started but pressed her palm to her mouth.

Panaque shook her hand. 'You do.'

She didn't breathe for a few seconds, then whispered, 'He loves me. He wants me to accept His will.'

Cloistered Battle-Sisters, as colleagues had told me, would freak out at a slightest attempt to postpone their self-sacrifice. Some rather run away to clash with random heretics and die as a Repentia. Sister's service in the retinue, though short and full of mishaps veteran Sororitas would have hardly tolerated at all, had shown her the drawbacks of overly formal attitude. Anyway, our funny luck had taken away all opportunities to win the crown of martyrdom. The turning point had been the marvelous return of our brilliant frenemies. Sister and Angel deserved true respect for staying sane while their old cozy world had cracked apart.

The choir of Hospitallers gathered behind us started singing. Sister knelt next to the wall, put her blessed weapon before her. Uncle sighed, muttering a prayer.

The spot of sunlight was crawling across the floor as time passed. My head dizzy from the thickening smoke of candles and incense, I closed my eyes, repeating the familiar words. White walls, white clouds of blooming orange trees around the little temple over the sea. Spring after spring in the world that was no more. Sad and joyful strains of canticles filled everything, soared to to the high shining heavens above the tent.

The service ended. Canoness Hyacintha bowed before the altar for one last time, then leaned over Sister.

'Come here, child.'

Shaking on stiff legs, Sister got up slowly. Her face and the chest of her robe were wet with tears. A Novice picked up the Eviscerator. We walked aside, past the half-circle of Sororitas.

Hyacintha's voice clamoured with power surprising for the fatigue of her latest months. 'You offered yourself to repentance, and we cast off your armour and your arms. You seemed the Emperor's forgiveness in the darkest places of the night, and His grace has led you back to us.'

Sister's voice rang with joy she tried to conceal. 'Before the Emperor I have sinned. I plead to Him so that He purges my sins and forgives my guilt.'

'Forgiveness is yours, and we welcome you back. Not any longer you are nameless to us. You stand before His visage, Sister Palatine Gallina, pure as on the day of your vows, redeemed of your transgressions.'

'So shall it be,' the choir of Sisters answered in unison. The Novice took away the Eviscerator. Two others appeared from behind a screen that hid their improvised vestry from sight, carrying parts of a white Hospitaller carapace and a bundle of blue shield-robes. The priest gave smiling Sister a blessing of the Aquila, and other Sororitas huddled around to greet her back.

Sister, blinking back happy tears to no avail, only nodded to the jolly chattering of her peers. She pressed the robes to her chest with one hand, took the helmet with the other and kissed the fleur-de-lis on the crest.

Panaque was the first of us to steal through the crowd. 'Congratulations! We've all been rooting for you.'

'A second,', he muttered back to our jolly greetings and dashed to the vestry still clutching the bundle. When she went out in the full Hospitaller habit, her shaven head covered by a white veil, it was barely the same person we used to know. The constant strain on her face had gone, replaced by the calm of her peers, her shoulders straightened. We had seen a broken captive, a penitent tormented by grief and guilt but now we had to get used to her old self of a seasoned Palatine.

'I abandon the holy wrath of atonement as I lay down the blessed sword,' she said firmly, turning to the altar. 'From now on I swear to fulfill my old duties with never-ending zeal and devotion.'

'That's because she had her part in saving the city from her old enemy,' I said to my friends.

The priest answered instead, 'Lady Inquisitor, it's true that faith is dead without deeds. But repentance isn't something you win with a few good things. It's when His grace touches you.'

'She wasn't a criminal or heretic but had to atone for years. Two disgusting traitors got pardoned right after they cried out, afraid for their own lives. Is it fair then?'

'If He was fair, we should be all sent to hell.'

Sister was talking to Canoness Hyacintha and two Almonesses. The shyness of past months slipped out in her tone when we walked up to them, but Hyacintha just nodded to her and stepped back to let us into their circle.

'May He be praised for healing the wounds of our dear friend,' I said.

'So I must thank Him by treating wounds of Imperial citizens,' Sister said. 'I'm not sure whether I'll be as useful as before. Our Sisters are brought up to be healers, not warriors. I'm relieved… to give up the Eviscerator.' She shut her lips and looked at the elder Sisters as if I was going to chide her.

I smiled. 'We thought the rite had restored your self-confidence. There are hordes of goons who can swing a chainsword but few skilled medics.'

She sighed. 'The Times of Trial are upon us. Please allow me a chance to serve in the ranks of my Order for a while before the end of days. It's not a demand. A humble plea.'

There was a safe decision I'd made up before. 'Right when we're finished with the Pirate King.'

Sister's eyes widened but she raised her head. 'I will hold on so as not to be afraid.'

'Good. We'll need your resilience in the mountains.'

'The Order will join you in a day,' said Canoness Hyacintha. 'A small contingent will watch over the last recovering patients but the main bulk of the hospital will be dispatched to the frontline. Count us as your trusty allies, my lady.'

Upon the return to the mansion our scoundrel Fluffster pretended he had nothing to do with the change but congratulated Sister without his usual weary tone.

'Your Sisters have accepted you,' Angel said with hope in his voice.

She took him by both hands. 'You remember how Captain Aphael and the sergeants met you. Devotion is stronger than the call of the ancient blood curse.'

I coughed. 'Your formal boss is listening, buds. And she hasn't fired you yet. Fluffster, is the owl there?'

He smirked and pointed at the back corner of the garden. 'The Emperor Himself has designed you inquisitors to be that stubborn. I've already packed my bag.'

When Fluffster was checking the engine before the take-off, I sat down to the grass where rose branches touched the owl wall. Buds had opened during the warm days, and the greenery was strewn with with flowers. White petals torn off by the night storm covered the grass like fresh snow. The snow of Cadian plains they show in the news daily. I closed my eyes, inhaling the sweet smell of past.

'Paradise. A place one would dream to stay forever.' Uncle's voice returned me to the lackluster present. He stopped in the sunlight, holding to the owl corner. I noticed he was panting. He pressed his hand to his chest, breathed out with effort.

'Are you fine, Uncle?' I hurried to him. 'Get in, I'll call Sister.'

'No need, lassie. Let her enjoy her special day. Age, that's it. If the Emperor is merciful, I won't live till the end of days.'

I sat him on the owl couch and gave him a cup of water. He leaned back, the hand on the heart clenched into a fist. Sister who rushed in to my call understood everything at first sight. She took a pill case out of her pouch.

'Angina. Good we haven't left yet. My Sisters will examine you once you're in the hospital. Blood probes, ECG, surgery if needed.'

'No need, I said,' Uncle wheezed out angrily. 'I can't leave you all in peril. Without me, the rodent will croak you in another mindless venture. It'll go away with one pill.'

'There's a risk of a heart attack.' Sister watched him take the pill, her forehead frowned in anxiety.

'I'm an old soldier, little angel. Tougher than many. Thanks for your care, but don't worry like that. Shame on me, for scaring you both.'

I left the mansion with a heavy heart, despite a seemingly easy victory over Fluffster's scheming. All gates and doors were closed and sealed by an Arbites agent who arrived from the hospital. The owl rolled out of the village to the highway. Today, Fluffster was driving to give Uncle some rest.

I pressed my forehead to the small window, staring at groves and farms sliding by. As the sun was going down to the pointed bastion of the mountain ridges, clouds swarmed the northern part of the sky. When the owl reached the deserted foothills, half of the sky was black. Peaks vanished from sight as a dark wall of heavy rain was coming upon us from the horizon. Distant lightnings flashed more and more often until we heard the first muffled peals of thunder.

'Get ready for a proper cannonade,' Fluffster said from the driver's seat. 'I don't just mean thunder.'

'How long until there?' I covered a yawn.

'The defence line is four hundred miles away. If the wind isn't too strong, we'll take wing when we're in the mountains. Anyway safer than circling those mountain roads under heavy rain.'

A single lit lamp on the ceiling cast yellowish cozy light on the cots. Uncle was sleeping, his head under the pillow. Drowsy Panaque tried to have another munch but soon he leaned back snoring, an unfinished sandwich still in his hand. The quiet chattering of Sister and Angel was drifting away, the contours got hazy. I could hardly keep my eyes open. 'Wake me up when we land,' I muttered and flopped down to my couch.

A rumble burst into the whirlpool of feverish dreams. My head still heavy, I opened one eye. 'The storm has caught us.'

The owl shivered lightly. Yellow flashes pierced the darkness underneath as we were descending through the veil of rain. A cacophony of voices and signals was coming from the speakers over the control panel. I sat up to look at the screens.

A single highway led high to the mountain pass, winding between crags. Dots of enemy squads swarmed the upper passages and plateaus. The Imperial forces were deployed at the foothills and the lower valleys, and only the constant fire of their heavy cannons kept the overwhelming cultists at bay. Fluffster pointed at the highland rocks on the map.

'The enemy has worse guns but I bet they use warp-stuff. Our losses are too big even for these numbers.'

'Send out a signal,' I said buckling the carapace. 'A fine team is always welcome.'

'Go down, or they'll frigging honeycomb us.' Uncle leapt up from his couch but Sister hurried to him with another pill in hand.

'Please, have some more rest today.'

A voice broke through the noise. 'Lady Inquisitor, HQ here. Sending coordinates.'

A small dot of an infrared beacon appeared blinking on a ledge covered from the fire by a rock wall. Fluffster checked the owl shields and set the course to the landing site. I reached out and tapped on the HQ bondage hut to open the info. Valhallan Ice Warriors, 54th Infantry Regiment under Colonel Broler, 78th Polar Guard Regiment under Colonel Kotov.

Uncle gave the thumbs up. 'Stubborn guys. We fought alongside them against a warband of plague freaks. They held the frontline while a half of our young ran like crazy from a horde of drooling half-corpses.'

The owl shivered again as it hit the ground. Fluffster got up and pulled the hood over his head. The door slid open, and a gust of cold wind swept through the van.

'I'll stay in watch over the auspexes from a suitable hideout,' said Fluffster. 'No doubt, they have enginseers of their own. First of all, I must not get into Lady Inquisitor's way when she disapproves.'

I hung the rosette around my neck. 'A tad less sarcasm, and it'll be perfect.' For a moment, I lingered. I had known how to do my job before Fluffster's arrival but he'd found a way to always come out as the one who saved the day. Other ways to deal with tricky questions brought more extra hardships than solutions. Let's be Radical until I get enough money to fight the new enemies but remain a relative Puritan. At least, it's hard to suspect your garden variety of Radicalism in a modest-looking cop with a retinue of prudes.

'Utterly serious.'

Blinking at furious waves of sleet, I stepped out into the darkness. Right ahead, under a dim lamp, a welcoming committee of three stood still as statues. One of them was a regimental Commissar, a tall young woman about my age, her retainers wore a standard demi-season Valhallan uniform. At the sight of a space marine both soldiers gave out a gasp of awe. The commissar made a brisk step forward and saluted.

'On behalf of Colonel Kotov and Colonel Broler, I extend you their greetings, Lady Inquisitor. I am Commissar Starke, former Junior Commissar under late Commissar Kovacs, now serving for both the 54th and the 78th Astra Militarum Regiments.'

One of the guardsmen retainers pulled a smug smile and coughed. Starke puckered her lips. Both looked down at their boots under her indignant glare.

'Hope you forgive me if I do without recalling all our names and titles, Commissar,' I said with a smile. 'Let my rosette and guns talk to His enemies instead.'

'I am honoured to accompany you to the headquarters. Unfortunately, Colonel Kotov was wounded in yesterday's heroic charge against a nightmare summoned by the traitors.'

I pricked my ears. 'That's important indeed. As a witch-hunter, I need to know everything about the sorcerous attack.'

The battered Chimera reeked of oil and blood. As it was bucking along the rough mountain path, I turned to a small loophole. The conversation died out almost at once, Starke too strained to talk beyond the standard military etiquette. Her retainers had taken their places in the turret and cabin, away from her youthful maximalism. When we rolled past the first sentry outpost, Panaque dared to break the uneasy silence.

'Ma'am is from Mordian, if I'm not mistaken? I have the best memories of having a mission alongside an Iron Guard regiment. Their discipline made even my late mentor jealous.'

Far from flattery, I could guess from his previous stories. Starke didn't appreciate the pickup line either.

'Only discipline keeps us from falling to unpardonable heresy that has been the plague of my homeworld for all its existence, Interrogator,' she said dryly squinting at his wily smirk.

'Probably hard to tame two regiments of Valhallans at once,' said Uncle.

'I have not to drive them to battle at gunpoint. That is already appreciated.'

'Commissar, you've mentioned a nightmare,' I returned to the most practical matters.

She smoothed her already flawless tunic and quickly folded her hands in the Aquila. 'Pardon me, my lady, but these are not to be talked about on the road. Ask the Colonels when we are in the camp.'

The Chimera stopped. I crawled out to the firm ground. Sleet had turned into a full-on blizzard, and I could barely see the outlines of blindage huts and cannons in dim spots of lamplight. From time to time a distant rumble of cannon blasts reached my ears.

A patrol soldier quickly hid his flask at the sight of our company before Starke could notice that. Stunned by Angel's majestic shape that appeared from the blizzard behind my back, he froze up for a few seconds before saluting.

'Greetings, Commissar, Lord Marine, Lady Inquisitor! Colonel Broler is waiting for you.'

A large circle of scorched, melted rock caught my attention. Oily black still showed through the fresh snow, a pile of mauled scrap-metal towered on the far edge of the burn. A faint trace of warp-taint was lingering around, and I shook my head to suppress nausea. A reek of stale blood and faded fury. My aura told me what had happened here before I could ask. Not the damn musk, but hardly any better.

Starke quickened her pace, looking at the path under her feet. Fear she didn't dare to show before the soldiers but couldn't hide from a psyker. When she finally stopped before the headquarters in a stripe of lamplight, her face was deadly pale even minutes after we had passed by the daemonic burn.

I showed my rosette to the guards. 'The Emperor has sent His agents to purge this world of heresy.' They lowered their guns without questions.

Bluish clouds of tobacco smoke swayed in the draught over the heads of officers gathered over the maps. Their dataslates lay on a makeshift table of ammo crates next to a half-empty bottle of firewater and opened cans of braised beef.

'Special guests are always welcome.' A tall, broad-shouldered man rose his head from the slates and threw a cigarette butt to the ashtray. He greeted me with a courteous bow and kissed my outstretched hand as if we were in a spire ballroom. Other officers stared more at Angel than at the others, astonishment on their worn faces. When Starke leaned on the crates and took a slice of salted lard from a regiment bulletin, Broler handed her a full glass. 'Commissar, how about a glass of slivovice? We value you too much to let you tire yourself to death. We don't have other Commissars left.'

'It is a Commissar's duty to stay awake, Colonel. I doubt it is the time for jokes when the traitors are preparing for another treacherous assault. Now excuse me, sir, I have to leave for a quarter of an hour to pay a visit to Colonel Kotov and inquire about his health.'

When she marched to the exit, ramrod straight as a Skitarius, Colonel Broler twirled his moustache and drank the glass himself. 'Valhalla and Mordian, two harsh worlds. So alike, so different, ma'am. She'd be more content with the Kriegers. The kind of Commissar they wouldn't shoot on the frontline for lack of discipline.'

'Our regiment's famous luck,' said a Major who was browsing the augur data. 'Her predecessor lost his head to an enemy shell. He thought it was a good idea to wear his gaudy cap to combat. We were truly surprised he hadn't survived the loss because the head had been out of use for years.'

'Spare Lady Inquisitor of salty tales,' Broler said with a smirk. 'I don't feel like getting burnt for disrespect.'

'If we burn officers for jokes, we'll have but Kriegers and the Iron Guard to fight for Cadia,' I answered. 'If someone's gonna set you on fire, it's warp-scum.'

'Starke showed you the black spot.' Broler frowned. 'They have few cannons and even less ammo but the sorcerous ones are worst of all. Were you a strict Puritan, we'd already get purged for knowing too much about things the yours prefer to keep for themselves.' He winked to me, and I smiled back.

Angel leaned over the table and made a few quick swipes across the map on Broler's dataslate. Under awed stares of officers and soldiers even his movements got the angelic majesty I saw in his Chapter peers. His old dignity shattered by the fateful skirmish in the valley was coming back. He spoke to the gathered guardsmen with the authority of a veteran warrior, and all eyes turned to him. Even Broler listened to his comments and tactical advice not daring to argue.

'You've got no heavy bolters in this part of the camp, Colonel,' said Angel checking the artillery lists.

'We had a few until yesterday, sir. You've seen the bunch of useless scrap-metal left on the burnt waste-ground.'

'Why haven't you relocated any other guns there?'

'I thought it would be unwise to leave the dugouts and the hospital without proper defense. We've already lost almost half of our men and nearly all of the local PDF when we counterattacked on the pass.'

'That's where they're planning to open another rift. Do you have psykers in the regiments?'

Broler shook his head. 'The Lord Militant ensured us we'd get five Primaris psykers on the sector border.'

'So you have to watch over the area right now. Cultists despise long-term planning. Once their witches are ready with the second ritual, there'll be worse scum in the camp than before.'

The Cadian war will leave many Ordo Hereticus cops in the vicinity without proper job, I thought stepping aside. My late mentor a civvy scoundrel, I still sucked when it came to military councils. For solving intrigues of high echelons, I lacked wealth and connections. On war-ridden worlds, there'll be no poisoned candies and candy customers to catch.

'Forgotten so quickly,' I said to Panaque with a chuckle.

'The best that can happen.' He had found a shaded corner to devour a can of beef he'd nicked from the table during the talk.

'Stealing from the Guard?'

He swallowed the first spoonful and licked his lips happily. 'Requisitioning in the Emperor's name.'

A wave of psychic nausea came over me all of a sudden. I staggered and bumped into the wall. Uncle hurried to help me.

'Quicker,' I finally wheezed out, struggling against the overwhelming darkness. 'To arms.'

Broler threw his fur hat on the crates and grabbed a helmet from a rack at the wall. Starke, a helmet already on her head, turned towards the corner, pulled a small flask from an inner pocket and made a quick gulp.

'To arms!' I cried louder, raising the chainsword over my head. The reek of tainted aether was flowing in, strong enough for even the weakest psyker to sense. A few guardsmen wrinkled their noses, one pulled his scarf up.

Snow was whirling in the gale, the camp drowned in icy gloom so even searchlights had turned to barely visible pale spots. In the center of attention again, I ran towards the source of the psychic leak, followed by my retinue, and more soldiers joined us on the way. Broler was shouting orders but the ringing in my ears muffled the words.

A burst of pain made me stop. I leaned on a pile of charred metal to catch my breath. As Angel had told Colonel Broler, the burnt waste-ground. Uncle pulled me back by the hand, pointing at the guardsmen setting up behind sandbags and rocks. I made a few steps back with effort and closed my eyes.

The earth shivered at a mighty impact. The reek had got unbearable, the viscous air didn't let me move. I opened one eye slowly. A sparkling capsule lay in the middle of the waste-ground, reddish fumes rising over the cracked surface. A blow from the inside shook the capsule, and it popped like a monstrous egg. Eerie unlight flooded the waste-ground. A twisted shape covered in glowing runes crawled out to the snow. An empty husk of a body animated by an inhuman conscience, so deformed all traits of age and gender had been erased.

The daemonhost raised its horn-crowned head, swung its clawed hands. Before any of the guardsmen could fire, it tore its own chest open. The body exploded in a dazzling blast of red and brass-yellow.

Unbearably hot wind hit me in the face. A giant horned shape stepped out of the flames, unfurling its dragon wings. The whole camp shuddered at the daemon's roar. Five young soldiers next to me gave out a cry when the Bloodthirster cracked its whip and swung its colossal battle axe.

Dizzy at the strange mix of horror and desperate zeal, I dashed forward. 'Cheer up, lads! A good day for a glorious death!' If I die, I'll be at least remembered. The guardsmen yelled back. Tears on my eyes, I pressed on the chainsword throttle. Broler and Uncle were still shouting behind my back but the battlecries drowned it out.

Panaque overtook me, a madman's smile on his face. He fired his gun with a furious bout of laughter but the end of the Bloodthirster's lash threw him to the ground under my feet. I tripped over, and everything went black.


	14. Episode 2 Chapter 5

Coming back to my senses felt like swimming ashore through a stormy sea. Waves of burning warp rolled over again and again, carrying me away from realspace. Gasping for air, recalling every single word of prayer, I opened my eyes at last. Sulphurous smoke was whirling over the melting carcass of the daemon honeycombed by a hundred precise hits.

I lay on my side in pinkish slush. My arm and ribs hurt but blood trickling down my carapace wasn't mine. I found my chainsword and tried to get up.

Broler's smiling face leaned over me, and he extended his arm to help me.

'My lady, one should never underestimate the famous zeal of the Inquisition. We planned to finish the abomination with gunfire but you decided to show us an example of wordless loyalty to the Emperor.'

'The most polite way to tell me I've been a moron once again.' My eyes smarted, blood rushed to my face.

Broler showed his shiny teeth. But for his age and his dark whiskers, he'd have been the Magnificent's lost brother. 'I've always admired reckless ladies. How can I reproach you? I must ensure you that the monster was totally a loser against one of the bravest Guard regiments.'

I looked down at the faded red stain under my feet. Chills ran down my spine. Exactly what had happened to my mentor's pupils. 'My Interrogator. I've had him killed. I didn't want to.'

'The attempt has failed,' a familiar voice answered from behind. I squinted at Fluffster's shadow that fell over the slush pool. Fluffster hung his volkite gun on his shoulder and came closer to examine the remains as if nothing troubled him at all.

Broler bowed his head and extended his hand as if inviting me to dance. 'Why not celebrate the victory now, dear lady? Our medicae will take good care of the wounded. Both those standing on their feet and those bedridden after the skirmish will raise their glasses to your bravery.'

'I'm sorry, Colonel. My work here is yet to come to an end.'

He twirled his moustache with a theatrical grimace of despair. 'Poor Gustav Broler has gone too old for the fair lady to condescend to his humble invitation.'

In the crowd of guardsmen I saw Uncle and Sister holding Panaque from both sides. The boy's carapace had been hacked in two, his jacket slashed open by a razor blade on the daemon's lash was soaked in darkening blood. Emergency bandages on his chest had already turned red. When I hobbled closer, his bluish lips moved. He mumbled a few indiscernable words but then his head drooped to his chest.

I pulled a wry smile. 'Screw those pious manuals for glorious death.'

'Stimulators will last until we carry him to the hospital,' said Sister. 'And then Mother Canoness will arrive.'

'Promise this is for the last time, lassie.' Uncle shook his head and straightened up, his left hand on his chest again. 'But for Angel who rushed to cover you, the daemon would have cut you both in half with one strike.'

I turned back, looking for Angel's bulky shape. 'What has happened to him?'

Uncle pointed at another pile of charred metal that had been a Chimera a quarter of an hour ago. 'The daemon set it on fire. Angel ripped it open with his claws and pulled out the wounded gunners but got a few blows to the head and back. So he's at the enginseer to make repairs.'

Three whispering guardsmen got silent when we passed by. Starke watched us leave with an even gloomier face. 'I thought better of your war discipline, ma'am. Many could have perished if they followed you.' I shrugged my shoulders, not sure whether I had anything reasonable to say back.

Involuntary hermits in the shaded hospital felt more festive than one should expect from the heavily injured. While a surgeon was checking the broken arm of a guardsman, he reached for a flask on his nightstand to toast to the victory with his buddy with a lighter wound.

Two nurses took Panaque from Sister's arms and laid him on a vacant cot. Next to him, in the corner of the hospital tent, a bulky grey-haired man was sleeping, covered in plaster and bandages from head to toe. Almost the height of a space marine, he barely fit his cot. A nurse leaned over him but the other put her finger to her lips.

'The Colonel has fallen asleep at last. The news shall wait.'

The surgeon finished with the fracture and leaned over Panaque. I took a chair in the corner so as not to get into her way. The warp reek was still too heavy to let the psychic strain go. Nurses hurried to the side shelves for bandages. Rubbing my pulsing temples, I turned to the tent wall and yawned. After the fail in the last combat, I was out of ideas. All heresy happening around needed military men, not private detectives. The closest intact hive to look for heretics was a few systems away from here.

As time passed, it got harder to keep my eyes open. The medicae left, leaving Panaque to have a well-deserved rest with a long seam across his chest. Sister led Uncle to the opposite corner with medical machinery to have his heart examined. I took a look at the notification list of my dataslate but turned the display off after a few seconds. The vox bead for the other ear had drowned during the venture to the purification plant, the planetary network didn't work in the area after the bombings. When I wanted to stuff it back into the pocket, the dataslate slipped out of my trembling fingers and slid under the Colonel's cot. Colonel Kotov stirred at the sound and opened his eyes.

'Still sitting here, girl? Come have some rest.' He spoke with effort, his voice nearly a whisper. 'I'm not gonna kick the bucket until the next fight.'

'Sorry, sir,' I said in my friendliest tone and took out the rosette. 'You probably think I'm Commissar Starke. My name's Inquisitor Volentia of Ordo Hereticus. Didn't want to disturb you, the damn thing has just fallen to the floor.'

Colonel Kotov rubbed his eyes. 'Aye, I see, ma'am. Starke has told me about your crew. You're welcome. I'm not a master of strutting and telling pompous bullshit like Broler, but I have respect for all loyal servants of the Emperor.'

'Colonel Broler can be easily mistaken for a feudal world cavalier,' I said with a smile. 'Something you don't expect from a Valhallan.'

'He fights like a Valhallan. That's enough.'

'Our joint forces have repelled another daemon incursion, sir.' Just the tiniest bit of sugarcoating for the whole black comedy of my failed exploit.

Kotov clenched his fist, nodded contently. 'Kicked some warp-spawn ass. Chances for someone to survive until the Wolves join us. I have to live on to taste their famous mjod.'

'Wolves?' I raised my eyebrows.

'We're lucky to be on the way of many fleets going to Cadia. Haven't Broler told you? The Space Wolves answered our signal a week ago. Be so kind, ma'am, pick up my flask from the shelves. Let's cheer to the victory and the brave boozers of Fenris.'

'Have the medicae allowed you to drink, sir?'

'I've got a broken leg, my right lung has more holes than a block of cheese, aye, but my liver's safe and sound. Let green boys whine.'

I handed him the flask, and he slowly extended his plastered hand to take it.

'To the living and the dead,' I said opening the mine. 'To another dawn of this never-ending war.'

'To another bloody dawn. Let it be not the last one.'

We clinked our flasks and drank in silence. Only a few minutes later I dared to speak again. 'Liquid courage, they call booze. Even a prude like Starke had a drink before the combat against the daemon. Though she tried her best to make us think she was fearless.'

'But for a daemon attack, she wouldn't have become a commissar.' Kotov's stern voice softened. 'I knew her father well. The Iron Guard regiment he served in fought alongside the ours for ten years in the long siege of Betta Splendens.'

I recalled the name from a bunch of old paper bulletins my late mentor had taken from an Ordo Xenos buddy to use for rollies. 'But that was a war against the Orks.'

'They've taught you well in your Schola or where you were studying, ma'am. He lived through dozens of skirmishes with the xenos, got promoted to Major, came back to Mordian in glory to his wife and daughter.' Kotov paused, his hands folded on his tightly bandaged chest. 'Local cultists summoned daemons to the military town. Killed the Colonel, the Lieutenant Colonel. Major Starke led the soldiers against a tide of Bloodletters that swarmed the streets. Died on the threshold of his own house. His wife got a heart attack and followed him in a year. When I read about a Starke among the new graduate batch of cadet commissars, I told Kovacs he could take a trainee. Something I could do for a friend's child.'

'She's doing alright, if we omit her touching commitment to the cinematic stereotypes of her job.'

'Mordian, that's it. What's more cinematic than going to combat in all this flashy red'n'blue with gold?' He wanted to give out a laugh, but only a wheeze came out of his wounded lungs.

I smiled to his joke. For a minute he stared at the ceiling, his breath heavy and raspy. 'Cadets shouldn't get promoted when they're so young.' He looked at me and frowned. 'Don't take it personal, ma'am. I'm an old man who's used to speaking his mind.'

I felt sudden tingling in my chest. 'You're right, sir. Otherwise, I shouldn't have roamed around like a beggar without proper work to do. Running errands for big dogs even my boss would avoid. They think I'll be able to fight against genestealers and Bloodthirsters with this penknife and flashlight. A damn worthless Hereticus lass.' I stopped, already sorry for this drunken tirade.

'Haven't heard Inquisitors kvetch yet. Strange days are upon us. Your crew is of use though. How many of us died in the fight?'

'None, sir,' I reported gladly. 'My Magos and a space marine sworn to my retinue dealt great damage to the enemy before it could do serious harm.'

He nodded. 'Good, good. Earlier, we could do reconnaissance through the caves. To get a warning before a new attack. But you need a witch to get to the other side. A captive spy told us, they have beacons to find the way through this damn maze.'

I breathed a sigh of relief. 'I bet there's a way to deal with that, sir. The Inquisition has many trumps up the sleeve.'

A nurse leaned over the Colonel with a food container in her hands. 'Sorry, ma'am, the patients are to have their meal. Then the surgeons will examine their injuries.'

'I hope my acolytes' lives are out of danger,' I said.

'Your Interrogator is sleeping after surgery. Sister Gallina is currently watching over his state. She's studying the results of your gunman's examination.'

Everyone was pretty busy. Too busy to recall I existed at all. I shook Colonel Kotov's hand and got up. A lesson learned after many ventures, it would be better to return from the raid before my good old paranoids started panicking.

I stopped outside, at the back wall of the hospital tent. Without the hat, my outfit didn't look strikingly Imperial. I laid down the chainsword, stuffed the laspistol into the pocket of my coat. A lucky cultist with a trophy weapon. After a long crawl through the caves I'd come out as disheveled and dirty as the sailors in the sewers. I hid the rosette in a secret pocket under the carapace and stepped aside into the shadow of parked Chimeras.

The closest entrance to the caves was behind a defence line of sandbags and boulders. The enemy preferred sorcerous attacks after big losses in first mass rushes against the Guard, but this part of the camp was still fortified to prevent sabotage or infiltration. Sentries saluted without questions. They watched me take off my hat and smudge dirt over my face, curious but taught to avoid messing with the Ordos.

'You haven't seen me.' I put my finger to my lips and squeezed between the sandbags before they could answer.

Damp darkness swallowed all sounds from the outside. Water splashed under my boots, chilly draught brought a stench of mold. Not daring to turn on my flashlight, I stepped forward carefully, touching wet stalactites, probing the slippery rocks. My right foot tripped on a slab, I fell on one knee and grabbed a stalagmite so as not to slide down the passage.

Rubbing the knee, I got up and leaned on the cave wall. A subtle buzz reached my mind. I shook my head, inhaled to concentrate on the signal. Too weak to locate precisely, it was a makeshift likeness of archeotech warp-beacons. A navy handyman should have crafted it from scratch stolen from the junkyard armouries of the Biruang. Soon the buzz grew louder, sending waves of dull pain through my mind as I was trying hard to follow the trail.

Slowly, step by step, I squeezed through the complete dark of the narrowing caverns to the source of the noise. After an unbearable long half an hour I got so close my psychic sight took the first glimpse of unlight coming from the other side. A pallid glow without a spark of warmth, it pulsed beyond the tangled passages of the maze. Then its thin ray traced a path through the caves, like the spectral thread in the Casbah.

Closer to the end the vaults were so low I had to crawl by wet stones. Once my leg slipped on the smooth surface, and I fell into a mud-filled crevice up to my thighs. I muttered a curse and climbed back to the ledge, cussing at the lingering pain in my arm. A gust of fresh air touched my face. I did the last metres to the exit in a desperate spurt and flopped face down in fresh snow.

The psychic radiance oozed from a crude metal box with a shard of dirty seer crystal inside and Stars of Chaos painted on all sides, half-buried in sparkling snow. But for the sigils, it could have been a fine example of Orkish approach to crafts. Heavy clouds split as the night was coming to an end, and both local moons flooded the place with light. It was a small enclosed place between two rock walls with an only natural aisle between the cliffs. I got up shaking snow off my damp garbs and pressed to the wall next to the passage.

Reddish glints of bonfires and giant shadows were dancing on pointed rocks that towered over a vast plateau on the other side. Enough to fit a few camps like the ours, it sheltered a whole horde of motley goons scurrying around. Only a small part of the whole swarm.

I walked on tiptoes to the end of the passage and stopped again to have a closer look with my warp-sight. The cacophony of thoughts, incantations and sorcery weaved so thick my tiny soul-light would melt into the mayhem like a forest bird melts into the green. Psykers joint in a drugged choir. Blood singing in a Khornate swordsman's mind as he swings his axe. No sentries, no psychic wardens. Unlike the Imperials, they didn't have to worry about any saboteurs because they were as eager to cull their own numbers.

No one paid attention even when I tripped over a stoned cultist. Two brawling ex-soldiers who still had their torn PDF uniforms on nearly knocked me over trying to smash each other's skull with steel rods. I leapt aside and stopped right before a bonfire pit. A ragged gang of about ten battered citizens was sitting in a half-circle smoking rollies. One of them reached out to touch carcases of some rodents roasting on long spits over the fire. When she saw me, she took out her rollie with the other hand and spat on me.

'Bugger off, you dirty beggar! Go catch your own rat!'

I roamed for a few minutes, stopping by the most peaceful-looking groups. Eavesdropping brought nothing useful. Most boasted their trophies or told embellished tales of their battle exploits. A band of heavily tattooed goners were listening to a scaly-skinned mutant's ramblings in a language I didn't know. Finally, I perched on an overturned ammo crate next to a big bonfire where the Panther's sailors were admonishing a crowd of ex-clerks in clumsy improvised wargear. A stout, tall sailor raised his cleaver over his head as he bellowed in excitement.

'Buck up, city pansies, desk jockeys! Our buddies from the King's flagship have already ripped all bean counters in Secundus to pieces. Kick the dogfaces' asses to get all the gold and stuff first.'

He turned towards the fire and wiped sweat off his face with his shabby brocade scarf. Golden tattoos of leopard spots on his dark skin glistened in the reddish light. I scratched my forehead. Rallying spirits in the name of the warlord he'd run from like crazy. 'Scared shitless by the dogfaces, aye?' He roared with laughter. 'The King's dispatched a special fighter to croak the Corpse Emperor's bootlickers. No mortal will dare to fight him.' After a dramatic pause he spread his arms. 'An Obliterator.'

The crowd met the word with clerks' languid curiosity while I got stone cold sober in a second. An overgrown mutated monstrosity turned into an amalgam of weapons by the deadly Obliterator virus. I doubted even Angel and Fluffster together were a match for him.

'Have you ever heard the word, bastards?' the sailor went on. 'He's huge as a two-storey house, strong enough to crack a tank in two. He's waiting behind the enemy lines to give them a fine thrashing.'

'A huge brute hiding in the countryside?' I pulled a careless smile and chuckled.

'You dumb desk rat, he's more a machine than a man. Those stupid Imperials are forbidden to even know about Obliterators. They won't find anything fishy in a battered van. Until he smashes their dumb heads!'

For the rest of his motivation speech I sat quietly pondering about further actions. We still had a good deal of work on the planet, and we needed allies. The Wolves had little respect for the Ordos so I hoped to negotiate through the Valhallans. The main thing was to strike before the monster found out about the coming allies.

Clouds over the peaks had almost melted as the day started breaking. The crowd dissolved, and I got up, trying to move in a relaxed way. A few hundred steps back to the caves. I hoped my own psychic trace was still strong enough to crawl back. There should be another beacon closer to the Guard camp but I didn't know how to activate it. I sneaked past a band of ex-clerks brawling over a lasgun and clung to the rock wall.

An unnatural icy breeze swept by with a disturbance in the warp. A group of strong psykers was coming near. I squinted at the source of the psychic ripple. Five cultists in painted bird masks and feathery robes were striding across the camp, led by a tall bird-legged mutant who raised her decorated staff as another band greeted them.

'May the blessing of the Changer of Ways be upon you,' she squeaked, a crest of shimmering cerulean feathers on her head fanned out.

I muttered a protective litany to shield my thoughts before they noticed me but her warp-gaze fell upon me. Her retainers clapped their gloved hands when she pointed at me with her staff.

'Our lost sister,' she clamoured. 'Her eyes longing for the awakening, her soul waiting for the blessing of Change!'

Tangled by their sorcery, my feet stuck to the ground. I snatched my laspistol, and the beam hit the slovenly cultist who reached out to grab me, but it exploded in a flash of colourful fire without any harm. Another cultist threw a stinky feathery cloak over my head, and they lifted me like I was nothing.

Flashes of painful brightness dazzled my psychic sight as they carried me away, helpless, bundled in the cloak. The bird-priestess started chirping an ecstatic hymn, and her cultists joined in clapping their hands. Finally, they stopped and pulled the cloak up from my face.

It was a grotto lit with floating spheres of warp-fire drifting slowly up and down painted walls. Fractal patterns and spirals seemed to twist with vertiginous speed, and I closed my eyes so as not to throw up.

'A sister bestowed with a seer's gift, unsullied by the Anathema's soul-binding mark!' the priestess cried out. The cultists screeched back. They laid me down on a rock ledge, and one of them sat on my legs. I struggled trying to move my arms wrapped up in the cloak. Another cultist leaned over and touched my lips.

'Open your mouth, sister. Our ninefold-blessed Seer will chant to the Lord of Fates so he glimpsed upon you and let you join our exalted choir,' I heard his voice inside my head.

I clenched my jaws and sent back, 'what are you gonna do?'

'We won't cut or burn you now, sister. A small pinch of potion will wed you to the Immaterium. You'll drown in the Sea of Souls and come back changed, like we did.'

Recalling all prayers I'd learned, I clenched my jaws tighter as one more cultist came closer with a small crystal jar. Cries from the outside made the Seer cease her chant.

'Barbaric servants of the Blood God,' she said. 'A mundane thirst for drugs driving them to spoil our rites to the Slaughter Lord's pleasure. To arms, brothers and sisters!'

Their auras, joined in a choir of power, dazzled my mind when they lit up to repel the attack. A dozen underhive goons covered in red tattoos broke in, brandishing clubs and cleavers with glowing marks of Khorne. The rock floor turned to smouldering lava under their feet but they, though slowed down by pain, moved on towards the psykers.

'Junk! They've got fine junk!' A Khornate in a bronze helmet gave a nudge to a lean teen who lingered before stepping onto the fire. 'Drag your cowardly ass there or you'll die from cold turkey.'

Before he could finish the phrase, the cultist who stood over my head clapped his hand. A sleek kineblade swished through the air. The teen fell to his knees, blood running from his mouth. Just a second later a Khornate smashed the psyker's masked head with a mace. Steaming blue ichor splattered over the wall. Their psychic defense that had dispersed the lasgun beam proved useless against another Chaotic weapon.

The other cultists around me charged against their enemies with staves and athames, violent screeching mixed with battle-yells. A Khornate reached for the jar left by the cultist on the altar and pushed me down to the floor. I grabbed the rock so as not to roll further into the fire.

As more cultists greedy for drugs ran to the grotto to join the fray, my captors got too busy to care about replenishing their ranks. Their psychic grip loosened completely, and I crawled to the wall, away from the skirmish. When I reached the fire trap near the exit, the psyker cultists' combined power had weakened so it had shrunk to a narrow strip. I leapt over the dying sparks to the morning fog.

The sky had already turned ash-grey when I hobbled out of the cave on the other side. The way back took less even without a beacon but the whole venture had cost me not only the laspistol taken away by the cultists but the coat I'd ripped when crawling under sharp rocks. I shook water off my hair and found my dataslate in the inner pocket.

Three incoming messages. Spam, more spam and a heads-on from Tamias. Sent three hours ago. 'My lady, the Space Wolves have entered the system. Gonna land somewhere near your camp.'

To my surprise and relief, Fluffster was waiting for me near the hospital tent with my chainsword in paws.

'Next time, you'd better warn us, Volentia.'

'Fine you haven't begun with anti-booze tirades,' I said with a weary smile.

'You know me too well to have found out I've got manners different from your other Imperial friends.'

'Are the ours alright?'

'If sleeping after surgery counts.'

'Tamias have written about the Wolves.'

'While you were enjoying speleology, I saw their drop pods land near the refugee camp. A meteor shower that will incinerate the poor bumpkins on the other side.'

'The Emperor has played a joke upon us to send us the Chapter with the worst attitude towards the Inquisition,' I grunted. 'There's something extremely useful I've got to tell them.'

'Striking news from the ragged camp?'

'Fluffster, hold your irony for another day. They've smuggled a disguised Obliterator right to that very site.'

He scratched his chin. 'Curious. The Panther used to have a few.'

'Let's get there in person anyway.'

'That's what I was going to suggest. The Hospitallers are unfolding their tents there, so Colonel Broler is going to send his wounded away from the frontlines along with Uncle and Panaque.'

'Hope the owl's ready.'


	15. Episode 2 Chapter 6

Broler and even Starke came out to oversee the preparations. Soldiers were carrying the injured to a Samaritan van parked before the tent. Fluffster had driven the owl to the camp, and Panaque and Uncle were already lying on their cots under Sister's care. Even Angel, fresh red paint drying on his power armour, had got in for takeoff but I decided to wait at the tent entrance to have a few words about the news with Colonel Kotov.

Despite the medics' protests, he walked out on his own feet, leaning on a cane. When I nodded at him, he chuckled.

'Barely recognized you, ma'am. As if a fortnight of swampland battles has passed since we last met.'

'These caves can be called a honorary swampland. Thanks for your advice, Colonel.'

He shook his head and frowned. 'Well, you don't seem to have witches around you.'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'When one's a witch, one can save a few pennies instead of hiring other psykers.'

'Dammit.' He cleared his throat. 'I know they recruit psykers in your Ordo but… Hope at least your soul-binding will prevent you from going ablaze or bonkers like other witches I've seen.'

I decided not to disappoint him and changed the topic. 'I need your collaboration, Colonel. In one word, sour news.'

'They're summoning even crankier daemons?'

'A fellow just as dangerous as warp monsters. And, for the worse, behind our frontlines.'

He frowned even gloomier. 'Please go on, ma'am.'

'A Chaos space marine infected with the Obliterator virus. Strong as hell, with guns sprouting from his muscles. Hidden somewhere on a parking or a junkyard.'

'Use your authority to warn the Wolves.'

I sighed. 'Sir, that's the main catch. They think of our kind… quite ill.'

'Our ranks are too few to withdraw to the camp. This might be a maneuver to force us to retreat and break through the pass.'

The surgeon walked up to Colonel Kotov, her face and tone full of reproach. 'Sir, that's just bravado unfit for a veteran leader like you. Running around on a plastered leg is an indecent example to the soldier. Neglecting your health given by the Emperor away from the battlefield.'

Kotov shook his head. 'Chill out, Captain, already going in.' The other leg on the van steps, he turned back to me. 'Ma'am, the Wolves will fight the monster only if they see him with their own eyes.'

Once I flopped on my cot in the shaded, warm owl, I felt my head get heavy. My eyes closing despite all efforts, I muttered a few quick phrases about the news to Fluffster and took off my boots. Everything around was losing contours until it dissolved into a haze of sleep.

The drowse didn't let me go even when Angel patted my shoulder. Grey daylight broke through my eyelids, and I rubbed my sore eyes trying to wake up. With trembling hands I emptied three portions of instant recaff into my mug and gulped the drink in a single sip.

'Are we there?' I stopped by the owl window looking out at shapes of tents and vans barely visible through a thick fog.

'The refugee camp,' said Angel. 'Sister has gone to visit the Hospitallers. Wait for Fluffster, he's tinkering with the cogitator.'

'Have you contacted your doggo brethren?'

'Brethren, not 'doggos'.' Again there were stern notes in his voice I hadn't heard in the first years.

'So yes or no?'

'Not yet, but soon.'

I grabbed a polishing rag to give a little more decent look to my carapace. At least the hat looks fine compared to the coat and pants. The clean, shiny rosette on my chest, the chainsword at my hip, I still looked more like a rogue Interrogator than a full-fledged respectable Inquisitor.

Uncle was sitting on the porch with a cup of tea, his face regaining colour after yesterday treatment. With a content smile he was listening to a jolly racket coming from the camp.

'Morning, lassie!' He pointed at a large clearing behind the row of tents. 'Do you hear? Everyone's there cheering for their defenders. The ones people love, not fear like us.'

'Let's join the locals then,' I said. 'If you don't mind, I borrow the old pistol from your locker for a while.'

The clearing that separated the living tents from the cargo vans was so crowded there wasn't room to swing a mouse. Bulky warriors in power armour towered over the cheering civilians. To the right, already on the road to the mountain pass, an Iron Priest with a few forge serfs were checking Land Raiders just deployed from orbit.

I came closer, and the refugees gave way once they saw the rosette. Bowls and spoons in their hands, they took places in a queue to a field kitchen in the center. Clouds of steam were rising over the cauldrons of soup and thick stew with a giddy smell that made my empty stomach rumble, but the sharp reek of mjod from the Wolves' cups was even stronger.

A grey-haired Long Fang veteran was standing by a pack of carousing Blood Claws, sipping on his cup and smirking at their drunken chattering. His braided beard fell across his rune-engraved breastplate, his grizzled locks fell down over the ominous emblem of a red moon and a wolf skull on his pauldron. Fangs and metal amulets that hung from his belt tinkled against the armour as he stepped forward to have his cup refilled.

A canteen serf handed me a bowl when I sneaked between gaping civilians to the cauldrons, but frowned and whispered a few anxious words to her buddies when I got into the circle of lamplight. The Long Fang looked Angel up and down, his green eyes narrowed when he turned to me.

'Your old dodderer of a boss has just kicked the bucket in the mountains, girl, and you've got your hands on the rosette,' he growled, and a mighty stench of booze hit my nostrils.

I ignored his rude tone. 'Sir, I'm delighted to greet the mighty defenders of the Imperium. I'm Inquisitor Volentia of Ordo Hereticus.' I lingered choosing proper words. Mentioning the Obliterator straightaway would sound weird. 'There's been a report of a serious heretical threat in the vicinity. I hope for your assistance in preventing danger.'

'Lads, that's whom the old farts from the Ordos have to send to the frontlines,' he said to the Blood Claws with a roar of laughter. 'I bet it was their bickering that has halved them, not heretics they're pretending to look for under every stone. So they've gathered little snots from all over the galaxy and gave them brand new shiny rosettes.'

The Blood Claws showed their sharp canines in a wide grin.

'Ma-a-a-am,' the Long Fang drawled mockingly, 'are we expected to bring brushwood for your death-fires?'

'We've addressed you with due honour and respect, brother,' said Angel. 'We all serve Him and the Imperium in the same way.'

The Long Fang glared at him. 'Sergeant, your brave blood-brothers are charging against the traitor hordes. Why are you tagging along with civilian-shooters instead?'

I touched my rosette, my cheeks burning, but he didn't let me speak. 'Gonna impress me with your little thing? Or wanna me to show you a much bigger tool?'

The end of his phrase drowned in the Blood Claws' thunderous snickering.

'Take it away, lassie,' Uncle whispered into my ear. 'Don't piss them off.'

I quickly stuffed it under the carapace and made a step towards the vans but the Long Fang barred my way. 'Girl, have you heard me? The planet and its people are under our protection now. Don't you dare to even try sticking your nose where it doesn't belong.' He picked up his heavy flamer from a row of crates at his feet and nodded at the Blood Claws. 'Lads, gonna get back to my pack while they're still boozing with the Colonel. Watch over the camp, so that everyone's safe and well fed.'

Packs of Grey Hunters were already heading to their vehicles. I leaned on the edge of a field kitchen table watching the Blood Claws who clamoured another toast to the Emperor and Russ, and the refugees cheered back.

'What a wild upbringing,' Uncle grunted. 'Something you should expect from Aphedron, not a devout Angel of His.'

'We should find and out the Obliterator before they're gone,' I said.

'Why haven't you told the Long Fang about the real nature of the threat?' Angel said.

'Because he'd have made fun of me even worse. You'd better look for the Obliterator in my pants, gal,' I mocked the Long Fang's tone and accent.

'Everyone around is totally off the rocker, lassie,' Uncle said with a sigh. 'The Times of Ending.' He shook his head and rubbed the left side of his chest.

Angel gave him an anxious look. 'You'd better rest a bit more, Uncle. Sister said your old wounds have worn your heart.'

'Work first,' Uncle answered. 'Let's go on until the old brute spots us. The damn reputation of the Ordos, that's why even most old friends don't want to talk to me anymore.'

I almost reached the first row of medical vehicles on the other side of the clearing but one of the Blood Claws overtook me with a few quick steps. A smug smile appeared on his freckled face as he caught me by the hand.

'Still looking for heresy, girl? Better come with me to find out about a kind of heresy your bluestocking bosses talk in whispers only.'

Uncle glared at him. 'Shame on you, sir, for telling such obscenities to a young lady.'

'Oldman, nothing personal, but when a sissy prude like that burns a million innocents and still poses as a saint…'

'Do I look like one who burns millions?' I interrupted him. 'Maybe you expect me to perform Exterminatus with my pocket lighter?'

He still didn't let go of my hand. 'But you're snooping around ordinary civilians.'

'If only things were that simple.' I frowned. It was time to show my hand. 'I've got reconnaissance data from the other side. Cultist ringleaders are waiting for an Obliterator to slaughter the refugees and the remaining soldiers.'

'Obliterator?' He scratched his ginger head. 'What the crap is that?'

'You'll learn soon,' Angel said in a grim tone. The Blood Claw, confused by the veteran marine's serious attitude, pondered for a few seconds and pointed at the hospital tents.

'Brother Herulf the Long Fang is still there. You should tell him.'

'Colonel Kotov can confirm my words,' I said.

'Quicker then.'

When we ducked into the shady quiet of the hospital, the Wolves had already left. I saw Kotov sitting on a cot in the distant corner with a mug in his hand. Before him on the nightstand stood a tray with steaming bowls. He put the mug on the tray and greeted the Blood Claw with a nod.

'Hurry up, sir, the yours are on the way.'

I slipped from behind the Space Wolf's back. 'Colonel, that's me again. Rescue me or the big bad wolf will eat me. Did Brother Herulf the pack leader ask you any questions about me or my business?'

He shook his head. 'Only about the enemy and my regiment.'

'So tell this crackerjack you also know about the Obliterator and what this word means.'

Kotov nodded again. 'True, I heard that from you with my own ears when you returned from the other side, shocked even more than after the fight with the daemon.'

'Have you ever seen any of those Obliterators? Is it also a daemon?' the Blood Claw said.

'A hulking abomination with guns sticking out of all his body parts,' Kotov answered.

'A Chaos marine mutated so badly he's just a love child of an artillery battery and a battering ram,' I said.

The Blood Claw looked at us with mistrust. 'We should have seen one if he was there.'

'The cultist leader said he's hiding among the vans.'

'Well, girl, let's go there together. If we find him, our pack will rip him to pieces of scrap-metal.' He smirked again. 'And if you've fooled us, you owe me a kiss.'

'I wish I could join you.' the Colonel clenched his fist. 'But the docs would go bonkers.'

On the way to the exit I found Panaque's cot. His face calm and rosy, he was sleeping like a newborn baby, only the bandages reminding of the grave injury. Sister who noticed me from the other corner of the tent, hurried to us.

'Fluffster has told us about the traitor menace,' she said before I could find words to deal with her possible paranoia outbreak. Her confident tone still sounded new to me. 'Mother Canoness has prepared a plan of emergency actions.'

'If only you both felt that grown-up in our first missions,' I grunted squinting at Angel's and Sister's earnest faces.

Angel put on his helmet instead of an answer. I touched the hilt of my chainsword. 'Pray for our luck, Sister. I guess it's of no use to enlist Fluffster to our kill-team right now.'

'He's scanning the vicinity with his relic weaponry at ready.'

The parking looked as peaceful as any suburb trailer park at day. Behind a column of hospital transports and cargo vans countless trailers of refugee families were scattered on an open meadow. Most were empty as their dwellers were still having their meal near the field kitchen but some refugees had already returned to tinker with their vans or just have a rest after lunch.

The special transports all proved safe after a check, so I left Uncle and the marines on the edge of the meadow, took my hat and headed to the trailers. To avoid mass panic, I decided to hide the rosette unless I spotted something truly fishy. Carefully sweeping the place with my psyker-sight, I walked around the park as if I was just another militia recruit. After the public row with Herulf my cover wouldn't last for long, so I hoped to find the abomination before too many locals notice an inquisitor at their doors. Some glowered at my dirty coat and my chainsword as I passed by. A group of elderly people who were smoking and playing cards at a folding table exchanged a few quick whispers and hid in their trailers once they saw me. The Emperor be merciful so they wouldn't startle the traitor, I thought gripping the sword hilt. If the traitor existed at all. Better for the planet but an even worse blow to my reputation if even this chase would turn out to be mere hunting for a paper tiger. A paper panther.

After a few hundred steps I finally sensed a slight disturbance in the warp. Too weak for a corrupted marine, more like a latent psyker or a thing with traces of warp exposure. The Obliterator virus dealt more with flesh than with the soul but my Ordo manual stated it had a distinctive warp-stench. Soon I found the source of the disturbance and sent a heads-on to my fighters.

It was a battered trailer once painted black but only chips of old paint remained on its corroded sides. Before the skewed door with stripes of grease and soot a slovenly young woman was touching up her smudged eyeshadows. On seeing me she wiped golden glitter from her hands on her torn skirt and showed me her clenched fist.

'Why the hell are you hanging about here with your toothpick?' She shouted. 'Bugger off!'

This one wouldn't take the search easy. Time to flash the rosette. 'You'd better keep calm, ma'am. Just a security scan. The whole camp is under serious threat.'

She spat on the grass staring at the rosette. 'You've heard what the old wolf told you. He'll tear your head off if you stick your nose into our business.'

Hardly any loyal Imperial citizen would dare to say that to an inquisitor's face apart from the wealthiest tycoons and the meanest underhive crime lords. Uncle's pistol already in my hand, I stepped towards the van and touched the closest wall.

The trailer shivered from the roof to the wheels with an ear-splitting screech of rusted metal. Back panels jerked up, and crooked limbs of scrap-metal unfurled over the grass, swinging blade-claws. The woman leapt aside to hide behind the junkyard monstrosity. Red lamps lit up on the hull as the Obliterator straightened up to his full height of a countryside house, his swollen helmet with welded horns and massive inset turrets towering over the trailers. His massive leg cut a hole into the wall of the nearest trailer, and a naked man covered in soap ran out cussing but he froze when the Obliterator's horrible shadow fell upon him. Dozens of voices uttered a crazed howl.

Oily dark flesh showed through the Obliterator's popped carapace when he lashed out with a slender mechadendrite. Numbed with shock despite all efforts to concentrate, I failed to grab my sword in time. The mechadendrite coiled around my shoulders and waist and lifted me. I kept on shooting to no avail. Holes from laspistol hits only added in to the messy look of his warp-ridden armour but it barely bothered him at all.

'Come on, lead away the civilians!' I shouted into the vox, dangling helplessly two meters above ground. First bolter shells hit the Obliterator but my friends were reluctant to start heavy fire so as not to blow me up.

A giant maw with sharpened metal teeth opened on the Obliterator's belly. 'Lapdog of the False Emperor,' a guttural growl came from his helmet speakers, 'I'll devour you whole so your weak flesh and pathetic armaments feed my superior might.'

Jump pack engines roared on the meadow edge. Four warriors soared over the camp. The monstrous giant shuddered when Angel and the Blood Claw landed on his shoulders but kept his feet. To my surprise, he only fought with his limbs. A big cannon on his forearm gave out a rumble but didn't fire. Two other young Wolves were hacking at the Obliterator's greaves, exchanging jolly battlecries.

'For Russ and the All-Father, let's bring his mutant head to Jarl Gunnar tonight!' the Blood Claw cried out driving his sword deeper into the Obliterator's corroded neck. Sparks cracked over the surface, and black blood ran down the greasy vertebrae. Angel's power claws cut the mechadendrite that bound me, and one of the Wolves caught me in mid-air.

Before I could press on the chainsword throttle, the Obliterator's head exploded in a flash of dazzling fire. A heatwave swept over my face, and Angel landed next to me just in time to pull me away from the headless Obliterator. Burning promethium running down the Obliterator's torso, he gave out a shriek and tumbled over.

'The old fart has claimed our trophy,' the Blood Claw chuckled.

'Get away before he explodes!' Uncle shouted.

The crowd of scared civilians gathered on the clearing around the kitchen gave way to Herulf and his pack. The Long Fang raised his heavy flamer to add in another dash of promethium but then Fluffster appeared from behind the tents waving his paw. Unarmed, to my surprise.

'Get away!' Herulf shouted. 'I'll roast this piece of junk!'

The agonizing Obliterator rolled onto his back. Smoke was belching out through holes and cuts on his armour, broken limbs sprawled on the grass. The lower jaw of his belly mouth fell off with a screech. Fluffster said a few words to Herulf I couldn't hear.

'Fenris hjolda!' Herulf lowered his flamer and made a sign to the other Long Fangs to follow him.

The burning carapace popped. A massive capsule that looked like a metal egg lay in the pile of scrap-metal, blinking with red and green lamps.

'A bomb.' The thought made my hair stand on end.

'What a lame attempt at dressing up.' Fluffster, the first to reach the battlefield, tapped on the capsule, so relaxed I'd think he'd gone nuts if I knew him worse. 'Not even remotely convincing for those who've seen real Obliterators.'

The Wolves surrounded the capsule holding it at gunpoint. There was a loud crack, and the capsule split in two. A man in black power armour crawled out and got up on his feet, holding to the halves. Remains of broken mechadendrites hung limply along his back and side, a battered Mechanicus cog was the only emblem remaining on his chipped suit. When all gun barrels turned to him, he only raised his hands wearily.

'Shit,' he wheezed through the corroded speakers of his helmet. 'All I wanted was to frigging leave that meat bucket. Out of ammo, out of oil.'

Fluffster picked up a broken piece of the destroyed construction and scanned it with a portable auspex.

'A latrine piece from the noble Macan Kumbang. The Warpsmith will run out of subordinate techmarines and tech-priests soon.'

What had looked like skin was but dirty rubber from sewage pipes, armour plates were just bulkhead fragments welded together. A parody of ancient Knights and Titans made of ship junk.

The Wolves' hearty laughter made me frown. I gave out a weary sigh and took out the rosette again. 'As a traitor of the Imperium, you're arrested under accusations of heresy.'

Herulf put his gauntlet on my shoulder. 'He's ours to question about the Despoiler's business, girl. You owe us for taking our time. Instead of fighting the traitor army, we had come back to find a wretched runagate in a stupid mecha suit,'

One of the Blood Claws came closer, leading the cultist woman by both hands. 'Got his serf. She nearly skedaddled.'

The Blood Claw who had followed us to the meadow leaned over me smiling. 'So you've indeed fooled us. But caring about folks does you credit.'

I went up on my tiptoes and kissed him on his freckled cheek. 'And I usually pay my debts. You fought bravely even though we battled a paper panther.'

'Floki, move your feet!' Herulf roared. 'There's a fine brawl ahead!' He turned to the crowd and raised his weapon over his head. 'For Russ and the All-Father!'

Every other sound drowned in a mighty cry, 'For the Emperor and Russ!'

I fixed the chainsword back on my hip and crossed my arms watching the Wolves leave. Another empty victory tasted even sourer.

'Saved the day?' Fluffster chuckled. 'Let's pick up Sister and Panaque and head back to the Stumblebum. The Wolves won't stay here for longer than a day, and we'd better follow their fleet through the warp.'

In the hospital, while Sister was checking Uncle's heart again, I told the story of my epic battle to recovering Panaque and Kotov. By the end of the story, both were laughing so hard even I found strength to pull a wry smile.

'I bet they might even release the fellow afterwards,' said Kotov. 'Just to mock and anger the Inquisition.'

'But that's a story that ended well for everyone,' Panaque said reaching for another piece of pastry on his plate.

My mood lightened up a bit. 'So there's something I'm able to teach you. How to put up with being a loser. Especially when you know the rosette isn't always useful.'

He scratched his head. 'Well, if my mentor knew that after his centuries of service, he'd still have been alive.'

'If we arrive to a civilized world again, let's celebrate the victory and the lesson with a few glasses of liquid courage.'

Angel entered the tent with a barrel of mjod in his arms. A sign of gratitude, or I'd better say, a bribe for keeping mumb about the mess.


	16. Episode 2 - Epilogue

Epilogue

It was a night of Red Moon but the trail had gone so deep down into the gorge that no moonbeams could reach the rocks on the bottom. They had been marching through the pitch darkness for a few hours, but weren't even close to the goal. The rogue inquisitor slowed down a bit, struggling with growing nausea. It was a nasty place indeed. Even the hot wind seemed to smell of the same wearisome musk and ambergris she used to enjoy during her first weeks aboard the Macan Kumbang.

The Pirate King strode forward in absolute silence. Unlike any day before, he hadn't spoken a single word since they left the Biruang. She had warned him on the day she saw first chunks of flesh popping through the bulkheads, but, as always in warlords, he paid more attention to his present campaigns. With the Warmaster's wrath to fall upon his head soon, he only ventured out after he had started to lose control over the great barge. Genestealers swarmed the decks, arriving in numbers from worlds the fleet passed by. That was the initial reason why an Ordo Xenos operative would mess with a traitor fleet.

But becoming the King's concubine was too extravagant even for a Radical, she chuckled recalling the past months. His bestial charisma had power not only over the mutant swarms, even when she had felt it fade recently. The mutant flesh, the smell, the devouring xenos were connected in an obscure way she hoped to find.

Until the last weeks she hadn't dared to use the contact her mentor had shared with her when she got the rosette. A man totally off grid even in the ranks of Ordo Xenos, he had consorted with many alien lords considered creepy by their own kind.

'We're there,' the King cleared his throat and finally broke the silence. 'Where's your metal buddy?'

Her flashlight lit up massive columns carved in the rock solid on both sides of a cave entrance. There had been no sentient life present on this planet for millions of years but the silhouettes of weird beasts painted in red on the russet stone had remained intact.

'The cryptek is waiting for us in the vault, my lord.'

'You come first.' Unlike before, his movements were clumsy and uneasy as if the place scared him, the Pirate King who hadn't been afraid of haunted Iarmailt.

Once she stepped in, light flooded the cave. Orange and warm, it made the place look cozier. Only if you don't mind its source. A dazzling sphere of fire was hovering over a creepy alien being in the very center of the grotto. She froze up under the fiery gaze of the cryptek's only eye when the spider-like shape of silvery metal moved towards her on four crooked legs.

'The Pirate King greets Your Excellence, Lord Illuminor,' she recalled the eerie words of the alien language her mentor had taught her.

Illuminor Szeras didn't greet her back. 'Let him talk quicker. This place is safer than many its likes but I still don't want to catch the Flayer virus.'

But when the King entered, Szeras shook his head examining the whimsical suit of armour.

'What's this cranky spider gonna do?' the Panther grumbled. 'Tell him about the damn meat in his damn tongue.'

The xeno knows Gothic, she thought with a chill down her spine. A few more reckless words, and he'll take both of them to his nightmarish citadel. Her hands trembling, she handed the case with flesh samples to Szeras, muttering explanations. Szeras let a metal scarab dig into the stinky flesh. He waited for the scarab to get back to the surface, then shook his head again and snapped his fingers. A blob of plasma incinerated the scarab on the spot. Szeras sealed the case again and stuffed it into a peculiar box that hung on his torso.

Rocking on his arachnoid legs, he approached the King and reached for the backpack of his suit. 'Child of a younger race, translate what I'll ask your beastly chieftain.'

'Your Excellence,' she mumbled, 'I'm afraid the King will retaliate against this… familiar attitude.'

'I'm not a devoted neuromancer but it's easy to intimidate a mind that small. Tell him to answer every question I ask.'

Szeras walked around the King bound by supernatural terror, examined the reactor pack, the runes and ornaments, the seer stone lenses of his leopard helmet. 'Where have you found this armour?'

'My queen mother gave it to me,' the King wheezed out.

Szeras gave out a screeching, bloodcurdling chuckle. 'I've known many of her adopted children in the times I wore flesh, not metal.'

Her voice failed her when she was translating this mocking phrase. The xeno was aware of the dreadful mystery but was unwilling to enlighten them.

'I bet you haven't noticed even the lack of a reactor in your suit,' Szeras went on.

'Are you… kidding me?' the King's voice was a shocked whisper.

'Did the place where you got it look like this one?' The flaming sphere soared to the very vaults, casting orange light on carved panels of theroid shapes.

The King gave out a shriek of terror and rushed out into the canyon murk. Szeras shrugged his metal shoulders while the rogue inquisitor tried to choose proper words of excuse. 'I'd have taken him for a more thorough research earlier but now he's already jinxed and worthless.' He raised his staff, and everything went pitch dark.

She moved to the exit, barely able to walk on her numb legs. On the first human world the Biruang would stop by, she'll leave the King. Dungeons of the Ordo are still better than the greedy maw of the Macan Kumbang.


	17. Episode 3 - Terror on the High Tides - P

Prologue

Every time the sorcerer got close to the Evernight, the gull pendant under his breastplate burned his heart with unnatural cold. But for the poor fellows who couldn't care for themselves, he'd have chosen a safer way to escape the place long ago. Even the Warpsmith avoided entering the dark maze of the daemon ship's corridors except for a daily visit in the company of his newfound advisor.

The sorcerer stopped on a rock ledge, watching the Warpsmith hover around the ship. The Dark Apostle, usually punctual and obedient, was late today. If all gods of good luck were merciful, he wouldn't turn up at all. In a few days, the Warpsmith would have to report about the repairs to Abaddon's commanders but they still had nothing to show. The Dark Apostle spent hours inside but gave evasive answers with his annoying coy grimace when asked.

Just when the sorcerer recalled the Dark Apostle's simmer, the familiar shape in dark red and steel walked up onto the plateau from the other side. The crimson fire of his backpack torches was exactly the same sinister hue of veins glowing on the black walls of the ship. Following the Chaos priest, three lean alien silhouettes appeared from beneath, striding in mindless synchrony. Two craftworld Aeldari and a Corsair. Captives, not guests. He tried to probe the aura of the catatonic farseer who limped first, but a hostile psychic presence struck back so harshly his vision got hazy for a few seconds. The xeno walked on, wobbly as a broken puppet, followed by an Aspect sniper in midnight blue and blood-purple and the Outcast in garish garbs.

'Their souls taste better.' The Warpsmith drove his throne towards the captives and scanned them with arcane tools on his mechadendrites. 'But they're too few to even make the black bucket wake up.'

'They will lead us to their brethren, both alive and dead,' said the Dark Apostle in his usual innocent tone. 'Have you been to Ulthwe, the home of greatest seers of the Aeldari? Their psykers are strong but their armies are weak. They have to hire anyone who comes across. Even cursed warriors from Altansar.'

'No wonder, Altansar is back to realspace as the legion scouts warned us a month ago.'

'Ulthwe's choir of crystalline seers radiates with such might it can be seen from the bottom of the Eye. Their souls will do what hundreds of thousands of weak humans cannot. Let me extract all necessary knowledge from the captives' minds. It won't take long.'

I should persuade the Warpsmith to send them to the Headsman instead, the sorcerer decided. Every time he tried to warn his employer, the Dark Apostle popped up like a jack-in-the-box. The priest's words were always polite but the wordless threat in his aura was the scariest the sorcerer had ever felt.

'Brother,' a familiar voice reached his mind from the depth of the warp. A nostalgic reminder of earlier times, a legion buddy who'd changed his colours so long ago. The sorcerer hurried away before the two could notice his psyker trance. Especially the Dark Apostle, though it was a futile hope.

'Just don't call me by my birth name, Iskandar,' he sent back. 'There are things to fear here.'

'Ashur-Kai sends you his greetings. He's sorry for not talking to you in person but driving through the gathering storm is no easy business.'

'Tell the sour fellow to cheer up a bit.'

'You shouldn't stay there for long. I'll find you a job on the Vengeful Spirit when Ezekyle arrives to check the daemon ship.'

'Why would he need a fool like me when he has plenty of smarties like you around?' the sorcerer chuckled sadly.

'You should agree, for Rowshan. For the Rubricae in your custody,' said Iskandar Khayon. 'All able psykers and generals should gather to let us survive the hurricane.'

'My fellows are the reason why I'm waiting for an opportunity to repair my gull.'

'Ashur-Kai said you complained that the gull vessel's influence was making your brother sick. Let him make company for Itzara. He'll be delighted in the presence of my sister and his childhood friend.'

'And the grumpy talking head.'

'That one hasn't uttered a word for years,' Khayon's tone warmed up a bit.

'Seriously, messing with the tank can ruin him. He was no psyker, in case you've forgotten.' Was. The past tense brought tears to his eyes. No, he shouldn't speak of him like that while even the tiniest spark of conscience remains within his comatose body. The sorcerer was luckier than Ahzek whose brother had died before tech-priests learned to build Machine Spirits with a human core. Iskandar's hapless sister who was the first success, then mortally wounded Hapi who still died a year after the completion right on leaving the ruins of Prospero, then Rowshan, the sorcerer's own brother. 'He wasn't born to be a warrior. He should have stayed on Terra to look for our gardens. For our ancestral home.'

'He'd likely have died during the Siege. But now, he can be healed.'

'Talk to old dodderer Bile if you meet him earlier than me.' The sorcerer squinted at the Dark Apostle and took a deep breath. 'By the way, there's a fishy fellow here. He'd probably overhear but still… tell Ezekyle to keep an eye.'


	18. Episode 3 Chapter 1

Once the oculus closed as the Stumblebum had entered the warp, I opened a bottle of wine to wash away the sour aftertaste of our previous adventure. Tamias, totally pissed off by sobriety forced upon him by Fluffster, shouted a few orders into the vox channel and descended from his navigation throne to our platform. His moves were still wobbly as if he was as drunk as before, dark circles under his sunken eyes gave him an undead look. He flopped on an armchair with a grimace of pain.

'If I knew my future earlier, I'd have dumped your rodent Magos to the warp as far from populated space as possible,' he grunted. 'Ma'am, I hoped you could have persuaded him to alter the course.'

My friends looked down at the table in silence, every one of them deep in their own moody ponderings. The only light-hearted member of our crew in the ship infirmary and my youthly optimism as good as gone, at least a few evenings are gonna be the same. Uncle was reading his medical file, Sister was browsing a pict album of her novitiate years in the convent. Back to her old attire and personality, she didn't feel at home in the crew as before. Saying goodbye to her Sisters had brought tears to her eyes, but for the promise, she would have left us on this very day. Angel poured himself another shot of mjod. At least the Blood Angels were far away from us since the first visit to the Panther's kingdom, and I hoped they had already left for Cadia.

'Cap, it's naive to think I haven't heard you.' Fluffster went out of the Machine Spirit chamber, chewing a block of processed cheese.

'I'm talking to Miss Volentia, not you,' Tamias snapped at him.

'Lady Melitara was totally right about the damn lack of respect for the Inquisition in our times,' I said after another sip. 'I'm just another hostage of the old blank, not an agent of the Throne vested in power I'm supposed to be.'

'In our previous missions, you felt even relieved to be a simple cop,' said Fluffster.

'Cops chase mediocre criminals through the streets, while you want me to fight Obliterators.'

'A single district Enforcer could have defeated that latrine Obliterator.'

'Is there anything to do for me there? Let Lord Mentor employ someone with better access to weapons and ships. I bet there are more traitors or renegades with the same mark.'

'It's safer around us when the former First Acolyte is watching you, Volentia. To be honest, I wasn't optimistic about the future of our team when I joined it. But after the captivity in the shrine and the second escape after the battle for Lathyrus, I'm sure you will grow past your apprentice role of a lowly cop.'

'If I survive, of course,' I said.

'My last hopes for survival have already died,' Tamias interfered. 'I'm old and wanted for smugglery and worse crimes in many sectors, but I have my crew. They're as dear to me as your acolytes are to you, ma'am.'

'Tell the stubborn scoundrel the Pirate King is still away,' Fluffster grumbled. 'The Biruang he's travelling on has been spotted on the very edge of the Eye, on an abandoned xenos world three weeks away from here. Three weeks with the calmest tides, and the Immaterium is quite stormy nowadays.'

'Your rodent ignores the fickle antics of the warp, ma'am. He might have returned even yesterday.'

'Or a million years ago.'

'I wish he had.'

'What about the Panther's company?' I asked.

'According to the latest reports from your two former nemeses, they've all left the barge overwhelmed by genestealers. Lord Mentor ordered Aphedron and Imudon to watch over the cursed ship the Black Legion is still working on.'

'They're perfectly fit for the business unlike me. Two veterans of the Great Crusade.'

'In the times of the Crusade, a task like that meant likely death even for the champions of those years.' The sadness of Fluffster's tone startled me, and I caught myself worrying for them. Both had been enemies only a while ago, but now they were in my crew. If fighting and dying, then all together.

Tamias and Fluffster demonstratively ignored each other until the end of the journey, speaking or I'd rather say bickering through me or Panaque whose wound had got better after a week of intense therapy. When the navigator was calculating the exit at the borders of Abilene system, Tamias finally took a few shots of strong booze to feel more natural if he encountered any of his former buddies.

But when the oculus opened to reveal the black outer space, he whistled and shook his head.

'Look there, ma'am. You've been to this place not long ago, do you notice it too?'

The massive hulk of the Macan Kumbang had moved to dimpled Pholiotina, right over the dark spot visible even from here. Where trading ships had been circling the barge like a swarm of blowflies over a rotting carcass, only a few escort vessels remained in its shadow.

'They've left the King like the sailors,' I said.

'The augurs show that a few traders are staying in high orbit on the other side of the planet. I'll drop you off with the owl so you could sneak closer unnoticed.'

The Stumblebum slowed down when a decrepit docking station showed up, surrounded by a pack of shabby merchant ships. Tamias ran up to his throne and opened the dialogue window. All communication channels were empty and silent. He sent a formal request, then turned on the mic and coughed into the vox. Dead silence. Tamias shrugged his shoulders and typed a few code lines into the field.

'Docking allowed,' a mechanical voice uttered from the speakers. 'Follow the light signals.'

'Looks like his port serfs have found a better job too,' said Tamias. 'At least they haven't changed the access passwords. I advise you against going to the station, ma'am. We're passing over a rocky desert that covers the biggest part of the continent to the very mountains. And in the mountains…' He stopped and winked.

'Good luck then,' I answered. 'Don't get bored.'

'Wait for a message from the Righteous Wrath,' said Fluffster. 'Lord Mentor might join us soon.'

I took my usual place at the owl window next to Angel's cot while Fluffster was revamping the stealth settings. Despite Panaque's protests, the medical council of Sister and the ship docs had decided to leave him in the infirmary for a couple more days, and the owl was quiet. Quieter and sadder than last time we had visited this system. Even Angel's sudden madness, the unlucky duel with long late Blackred DM seemed so colourful against these bleak days.

'We could have taken at least Uncle if Sister's watching over Panaque,' I said taking my old mug from the box under the cot. 'But, between us, his wound had almost healed, so she should take her part in the missions.'

'She's no fighter after retaking her vows and won't help us during a simple reconnaissance task. As for Uncle, the planet's thin atmosphere and cold climate isn't good for his current state of health.'

'You would have left me on board as well if I wasn't your boss.'

'If you didn't have the mark.' He narrowed his beady eyes so his muzzle got a sinister expression.

'A canary in the mine then.'

'We're allies and shouldn't argue without need,' Angel raised his voice.

I sighed. 'Someone's grown up into quite a bold fellow.'

'It's shameful to nurture the same weakness that had brought me to the exile. The sons of Sanguinius shall be as valiant as our angelic sire.'

Stars were lighting up on the dark blue sky as the owl was gliding over the endless plain of barren reddish stone. Pholiotina, too dry and far from the sun to birth life by itself but habitable, had been abandoned as soon as the horrible relics were discovered, and all traces of human presence had been wiped out after millennia. Only the Black Crusade turmoil had saved it from an Exterminatus while the furthermost barren planet had been blown up by the Inquisition. At about midnight by local time, the owl augurs showed the mountain ridge in the distance.

'Take out your warmest winter gear,' Fluffster ordered. 'It's quite frosty outside. The two are already waiting in the rocks.'

When the owl slowed down as we reached the mountains, Fluffster opened his locker and took out a small box. Inside there was an ornate ring with a red shimmery gemstone. 'For an emergency only. Jokaero weapon-rings are too precious to waste for every whim.'

A cold gale bit my cheeks and neck through the scarf, and I pulled the collar up. A thin layer of frost sparkled on the mountain slopes under the incredibly bright icy stars scattered all over the sky. A narrow stairway cut in the rock solid led to the plateau taken by the Black Legion. Tall crags hid the Evernight from sight but its suppressing presence touched my mind once I stepped on the ground. Dizzy at the psychic buzz and lack of oxygen, I took a deep breath rubbing my temples. Fluffster stuffed an oxygen mask into my hand and hurried forward to a shaded grotto under a massive rock ledge.

Two men went out to meet us. The taller one, clad in the purple of the Phoenician's sons, greeted us with a gracious bow fit for a ballroom.

'The Magnificent is always himself, no matter what side he's on,' Fluffster said with a chuckle. 'You've got news you didn't want to share through the message canals.'

Imudon remained in the shadow, the dark grey ceramite of his armour almost merging with the rock wall. I touched his mind and felt sadness he tried to overcome by repeating his list of tasks.

'Please keep your witch-tricks for the raid, girl,' he grunted. 'The whole place there is buzzing with every kind of sorcerous noise. Your mockingbird buddy is the worst of all.'

Despite the vertigo, I smiled under the mask. 'You've found the tricky man.'

'He's found us,' Aphedron answered in his stead. 'The slippery bastard is a literal wonderworker. I suggested swapping a deal of my swag for his luck but he laughed and said he still needed his luck to stay away from the Inquisition.'

'Let's see how his luck will help him now. You haven't caught him yet, as I see.'

'He's our safe passage to the camp,' said Imudon. 'The one who's watching over the one you won't like to meet again.'

Tears rolled down my cheeks at a sharp sting of pain, and I pressed my hand to my midriff on fire.

'You knew that from the beginning, Fluffster,' I whispered panting.

'Everything comes together on this forlorn orb of barren stone,' Fluffster said calmly. 'Your mark that will allow you to come closer to the ship. The strange man who can give you a few answers for your questions if you pay due attention.'

I didn't dare to answer whom of the two he meant, the sorcerer or the dark priest.

'The gull buddy wants to evade the Ordos but always turns up where we've got business.'

'Our fuzzy Magos is interested in all things the sorcerer's planning to use for his tricks,' said Aphedron. 'And the poor sorcerer will be pissed off even worse when the old blank grabs him by the balls.'

'So he's already here,' Fluffster said in a livelier tone.

'Arrived yesterday on a merchant bucket like you. There's something brewing in the camp. Their repairs are going slowly even with the Dark Apostle's help.'

'Were going,' said Imudon. 'The sorcerer told us about a few captives from Ulthwe they're planning to use. The xenos arrived almost at the same time as Lord Mentor.'

'Cynops did his part then,' Fluffster answered after a couple of seconds. 'We'll do the ours.'

'You invited them for negotiations.' With what I knew about their gang, I was almost sure.

'That's all you should know by now.'

'If you're concerned about the mark, you've already told me enough for the enemy to overhear.'

'But nothing that he doesn't know yet.'

Fluffster turned abruptly and pressed a few buttons on an augmetic vambrace he wore under his red robe. The owl moved past us until it vanished in the darkness of the cave. He nodded to us and patted the still silent Angel on the back. 'Well, as always, I'm staying here. I guess your buddy will cover for you until you're in the camp.'

The sorcerer's veil of magic enveloped us as soon as we started climbing up to the plateau. My pounding heart calmed down, even the burning psychic pain ceded. The Dark Apostle is still watching me, I shouldn't let him deceive me, I thought going up the slippery giant steps built for ancient xeno dwellers of this place. Two hours had passed but the sky remained as ink-black as before. Night doesn't make the camp of superhuman fighters safer. I touched the ring with the other hand, found a trigger hidden on the edge of the elaborate setting.

'The bastard knows we're heading to the ship,' I whispered when we reached the top stairs.

'Nevermind,' said Aphedron. 'If he gave a damn, he'd have already attacked us.'

'He enjoys the turmoil while the idiots think he's doing repairs,' a mocking voice giggled inside my head.

'Promise not to skedaddle this time, buddy,' I sent back to the sorcerer. 'We've got an important talk ahead.'

'Don't be that boring, dear. The most enchanting discoveries come up your way without all this stupid planning. Relax and let your life lead you to wonderful adventures.'

'Warn us next time,' Imudon growled. 'Your warp-voice can be heard even by a frigging blank.'

'I hope the old bully is too senile and deaf to hear it anyway. As for any eavesdropping, I'm the only strong psyker in the camp. By the way, look up and to the right.'

Veiled with sparkling sorcerous flames, he stood on a ledge under a rock arch, all jolly cerulean and gold against the dull dark hues of the place. The eye-lenses of his gull helmet lit up when he waved his gauntlet, and a bird head on his staff spit out a jet of spectral fire.

'Back to your flash'n'cash after the factory work, man,' I said. 'No wonder you turned down Aphedron's offer.'

'I've already got too much attention. A trail of admiring ladies will make the situation even more ridiculous.'

'Heretic,' Angel roared from behind. 'Thank your bluebird of a false god that I gave an oath to Fluffster and Lady Volentia. But if our paths cross in future, I'll rip off your throat for what you did to my men.'

'The boy's growing up,' Aphedron chuckled. 'If he's lucky, he becomes a man before the Despoiler's forces crush him.'

'Brother,' said the sorcerer, 'what does your memory tell you about the beginning of our strife? As if there's anything good in attacking a harmless man like me who was going for his own business.'

'Aye, a harmless daemon summoner.' Angel put his gauntlet on his bolter but didn't pull the weapon out.

To prevent further arguments, I went back to our mission. 'The cricetid wants us to take the xenos to him and meet Lord Mentor.'

'With the former, I'll help you. As for the latter, be so kind to leave me out.'

'You both, shut up,' said Imudon. 'Blabbering too much.'

The sorcerer shook his gull head. 'My paranoid friend, the man you fear has his own goals.'

'I've already told you you're not the one to be trusted.'

While they were squabbling over the fishy task, I looked forward to the black formless mass of the Evernight towering over the scant campfires like a stormcloud ready to bring a tempest on a city. Where mountain crags didn't hide it from our eyes anymore, it could be seen from every point of the plateau. The net of crimson veins was glowing brighter than last time, its whimsical pattern constantly flowing and changing. We got closer, and I saw the place where the Warpsmith's servants had gathered the captives from the Black Rat to drive them in for another sacrifice. Now it was abandoned save for a set of machinery on both sides of the entrance. Lamps were flickering on their parts of twisted metal, a watcher drone was hovering over them sending data to their master.

'Now hush.' The sorcerer put his fingers to his lips. 'You'll be invisible to the guards so keep mumb until we get to the Headsman's wagon. When I left the camp two hours ago, he planned to spend the whole night munching and boozing outside of his lab.'

'How does he feel after a grenade to his mug?' I said.

'Healthier than you'd think but even more disappointed with the Imperium and its institutions.'

'As if it was the Imperium who locked him in with the genestealers and a can of poison.'

'He harbours even fewer illusions about his boss and peers.'

Rows of tents and vans around the Evernight were guarded by artillery positions set up on the nearby rocks. Almost a whole company in its full strength, the Panther's men were too dangerous even for a few Guard regiments to attack. Dark rumours about the Evernight kept many of his rivals at bay.

After a few steps the sorcerer stopped and raised his hand. 'Just coming back. Don't you tell the Warpsmith right now.' He didn't share his vox channel so we only watched him nod listening to the guard's answer. 'Make up some excuse. I don't want to be disturbed until tomorrow's war council.'

'War council?' I sent to him when we walked past the firing point.

'The Warmaster is curious about how they've spent his treasures. But for an old buddy in charge of the control commission, I'd have run away from here.'

Aphedron put his gauntlet to the speakers of his helmet as if to muffle a bout of laughter. 'By the Emperor, I'd give much to see the Stray Cat's face when he's chastised by the Tizcan nerd!'

'I guess that was why he left so suddenly.'

'We visited a world bombed by the Biruang,' I recalled the last adventures.

'His Inquisitor concubine went nuts about the flagship barge turning into a literal butthole, so she suggested he visited a skilled veterinarian who's excellent at turning nasty flesh into neat metal.'

'By the most holy Emperor on holy Terra!' Aphedron's voice sounded shocked.

'Lord Mentor has forbidden you to use any other cusses?' giggled the sorcerer.

'What do you mean?' I pulled the side hem of his robe.

'A cryptek,' I heard Imudon's voice from my vox bead. 'Famous, well, infamous for the biotransference that doomed his kind. I'd bet the xeno will take both to his vivarium.'

'As if his last clash with the Necrons wasn't enough,' said Aphedron.

The sorcerer shrugged his shoulders. 'You haven't seen the Panther in person since Iarmailt. The raid has changed him in the weirdest way possible. Flesh started growing all over the barge, his own relic suit had been growing until it nearly reached the size of a Centurion.'

'Growing?' I asked, surprised.

'Everything might happen nowadays, dear, especially to a dirty beast like him. We'd have expected him to catch a bug with his private parts, but instead he has it in his armour.'

'Why hasn't his Headsman cured him?' Aphedron said, still snickering.

'The old lazy glutton is no fool to mess with that sickness. Since the start of the change, he's trying to keep as far as possible from the Macan Kumbang. He volunteered for the Biruang trip just to have a chance of running away.'

He found a shortcut between cargo and ammo vans on the edge to evade large bands of cultists and forge serfs who crowded the central passages. A quickly built fence of barbed wire bound with wards and amulets surrounded a large dirty trailer with a faded Prime Helix on the side wall.

'He's dreamed of getting a few Aeldari wrack-like retainers, but he's not allowed to perform the experiments until the company robs Ulthwe of its crystal seers,' the sorcerer sent to me. 'They're kept in the back part.'

An strapping marine in Terminator armour stood on guard at the rune-inscribed gate. A gust of uncanny chill brushed against my mind but the uneasy feeling was gone before I could concentrate. The sorcerer chuckled and pointed at the trailer door.

'Lord Warpsmith has sent me.'

The guard lowered his weapon, and the chill reached me again so that I shivered. Likely the effect of the wards though it felt more like a blank's presence. Lord Mentor or any of his servants could already be near.

When I sneaked inside after the marine and the door clanged closed behind us, the sorcerer found a switch on the wall. In the dim, cold light of a few white lamps on the ceiling I saw piles of dusty cardboard boxes and plastic bags. The room that no one had cleaned for years was meant to store surgical equipment and medicaments but the Headsman used it to dump empty bottles and cig packages. Chains of footprints on old dust led to a curtain that hid the back wall.

'Right there,' said the sorcerer. 'I'm gonna distract the lab technicians.' He threw a small crystal blade, and Aphedron caught it in mid-air. 'This one will cut through the enchanted locks. Do it quicker before it's shattered to pieces.'

A flash of warp-fire swept across the room, and he vanished in his favourite manner. Angel remained by the door with his bolter at ready while Imudon and Aphedron pulled the curtain aside and beckoned me. Charms of wraithbone and crystals glowed softly in the half-light over a reinforced cage of thick metal bars. Inside three lean humanoid shapes sat leaning on the wall, clad in dirty bodygloves. Their combined psychic might shone even through the barrier of protective sorcery.

'Look.' Aphedron stuck his hand between the bars, leering. 'The great sniper's perfect timing failed him.'

The xeno in the middle brushed long dark hair off his angular face. His frozen features showed no reaction but the touch of his aura got freezing cold.

'Hard to forget the first Eldar I've met.' By that psychic chill I recalled the Exarch at once even though I hadn't seen him without his sinister armour.

'We've arrived by Lord Crinitus' word,' Aphedron went on. 'We've agreed on taking out two of them so you'll take up the fancy role of a guide. I'll personally teach the Headsman a few stunts to repay what you did to me on Altansar. There are psyonic poisons that can corrode your very soul to leave you in agony for the rest of your wretched life.'

'Pathetic mon'keigh, you haven't changed against the Weeping Seer's hopes,' the Exarch answered with scornful indifference.

'Friends of Lord Cynops and Lord Crinitus.' The xeno in the left corner, a red-haired woman, got up, and seer runes on the collar of her suit shimmered in the dim light. Her voice sounded haughty but her High Gothic was flawless. 'We've been sent to meet you by the oldest Farseer of our kind. Have you checked there's no trail or overwatch?'

'The sorcerer is our ally,' said Imudon. 'There are no other strong psykers here.'

'Prince Fiachra is staying here.' She pointed at the third xeno. 'He knows what to do. Lead me and Exarch Eitleog to your superiors.'

Aphedron touched a lock ward to cut it with the sorcerer's gift but the Aeldari woman's fingers snatched it from his hand. In a moment of lightning-swift slashes the psychic light of all locks died out, and the cage door swung open. Small splinters of blue crystal scattered over the floor, and two Aeldari stepped out stretching their limbs.

'Our armour is in those boxes,' said Exarch Eitleog. 'Your crippled healer planned to sell it.'

'I'll sell it myself then,' Aphedron growled but kicked the box to Eitleog's feet.

'Hope you'll tell us more about what happened on Iarmailt,' I said.

He didn't even look at me, cleaning his heavy launcher. 'Apprentices like you should better listen instead of asking.'

Angel punched the van door open. I ran to the exit, trying to overtake my superhuman companions. My foot tripped on a bottle, I tried to keep my balance but staggered to the right. The part of metal floor under my boots creaked and caved in. With a desperate cuss, I plummeted into the dark.


	19. Episode 3 Chapter 2

The heavy lid thudded closed above my head, and the murk swallowed every sound from the outside. My oxygen mask had slipped down to my chin, and a thick smell of booze and sweat made my bowels shrivel. I lay on stinky rags and damp cardboard. My flashlight fell off from my belt after the fall but I reached out and found it next to my leg.

It was a pit in the rock solid where the Headsman had probably kept his test subjects. Overturned dirty bowls lay next to sleeping nests, here and there heavy chains with traces of blood were attached to the walls.

I got up and pressed on my vox bead to send an emergency message. The trapdoor in the ceiling was too high to reach, so I turned to a partition wall of metal in the other end of the dungeon. Trying to step over spots of dried waste on the floor, I walked up to a door in the middle and stopped to scan it with my psyker-sight. It worked weaker than before, strained by the exposure to a few powerful auras at once but I felt presence of sentient life on the other side.

Power claws screeched on the trapdoor from the other side but the door opened at once. A bulky man in power armour waved his hand before I could react. My right arm cramped up to the shoulder, I darted back but the man pinned me to the wall by the throat. The Headsman's stubbly swollen face leaned over me, a weary grin on his lips. A sickening stench of spirit, cheap tobacco and unwashed body hit my nose.

'The Holy Inquisition has found me even here.' He pulled the Jokaero ring off from my finger and stuffed it into his belt pouch. 'Gonna take my other arm as well?'

The hand that gripped my throat was a crude prosthetic made of junk metal, stinky oil was leaking through corroded cracks on its joints, wires hung loosely. Reddish fresh scars crisscrossed the Headsman's cheeks, one eye was covered with a dirty bandage. When I rubbed my cramped arm with the other hand, he pulled a thin needle out of my shoulder and frowned.

'If you give out a sound, I've got another dose to put you to healthy sleep.' The screeching and thumping on the above stopped. The Headsman sighed. 'The trapdoor machinery is connected to a few needler launchers.'

'I've brought along a few space marines,' I whispered.

'It doesn't matter. The poison will at least slow them down until the Panther's men rush in.'

He squeezed my throat tighter and threw both of my weapons to the corner. 'Now think about how to settle our grudge. First, you break out of my lab before the experiment is finished. I could have forgiven that but then you jump out right when I'm about to leave the sector for good. For two times in a row.'

'Bargain with the two goons.'

'Aphedron doesn't have anything to my taste anymore. Imudon has always been a useless bore. Well, the physician nun who scratched my face is still in your service. Give her to me and count the matter forgotten. I'm out of serfs. You're utterly worthless for the job.'

'She would never serve a traitor renegade, man. You have a bunch of Eldar to fuss with test tubes for you,' I bluffed.

'I need assistants even to modify the xenos. The manuals I got from Bile's apprentices require a whole team to make a single second-rate wrack. With a low-to-moderate chance of success.'

'And you're too poor to afford help of a haemonculus,' I said with a chuckle.

He only chuckled back. 'A witty new friend of mine suggests selling a pack or two of the baldies in orbit to Commorragh. But I'm afraid the demand has already fallen.'

The trapdoor opened with a loud clap, and a space marine jumped down in a torrent of lamplight. Chills ran down my spine when I saw horns on his helmet. The guardian of the van. But then two of my fighters landed on the floor next to him.

The Headsman gave them a stink eye. Barely any newcomer was able to surprise him, let alone make him show any signs of unrest. 'What the heck do you want here? Try to shoot at me, and I'll blow the scant brains of your Inquisitor.' He showed his middle finger to the Black Legionnaire. 'How much did they pay you, Siamang?'

'I have borrowed your accomplice's armour,' Lord Mentor's bass voice bellowed from under the gilded helmet. A freezing anti-psychic wave hit me with a nasty bout of vertigo, and everything went hazy.

'Shit,' only said the Headsman. 'You're after the knife-ears.'

'And you're not as dumb as the Panther thinks,' Aphedron said holding the Headsman at gunpoint.

'The sorcerer is here. He'll call the others.'

'A friendly bit of advice, don't mess with the old pariah jerkass.' I heard the sorcerer's voice from above.

'You too, gullhead. I'm not gonna let them take the xenos away.'

'We leave the corsair,' said Imudon. 'But even he is of no use for your affairs. Haemonculi have to modify and teach their wracks for decades.'

The Headsman shook his head. 'They're all quick learners anyway. And I bet they'll prefer a good job to becoming the Whore-god's daily snack.'

'You wanted to leave the band,' Lord Mentor roared again. 'I know the Warpsmith has been ordered to keep the Thunderhawk codes from the other henchmen.'

'I like this better.' The Headsman's grip on my throat loosened a bit. 'Let's pretend I haven't seen anything.'

Lord Mentor swung his gauntlet, and the Headsman caught the thing with his prosthetic hand. Free, I breathed out and tried to move the still numb arm. The Headsman scanned the memory card he was holding and nodded reading a column of symbols that lit up on his wrist-mounted screen.

'Just don't show your face around me again, girl,' he told me and patted me on the back. 'Tell the same to your nun and your other goons. The drug will wear out in a quarter of an hour.'

'The Jokaero ring,' I reminded him. 'I wouldn't mind if it was mine.'

Under Lord Mentor's stare the Headsman found the ring in his pouch, and Lord Mentor took it himself.

'I wish I could give a ring to a fair gal, not to a loyalist bruiser,' the Headsman said with a sour half-smile.

Lord Mentor answered in his humourless tone, 'This ring belongs to my comrade-in-arms and was stolen from an Imperial Inquisitor.'

When he was finishing the phrase, the Headsman headed back to the door without saying goodbye. The door closed with a thud, and a cloud of old dust swept through the room. Lord Mentor shook his coat and crossed his arms on his breastplate.

'What an ill-bred slovenly slacker. The Great Crusade ended that sadly because we had too many like him in our ranks. No surprise he found himself among the traitors.'

'We're lucky he loves booze and his own neck more than the Panther's cause,' said Aphedron. 'Well, obvious if your boss has gone crazy with exotic pets.'

'Silence,' Lord Mentor bellowed. 'We're going out. You and Sergeant Pterophyllo have to escort the xenos to Lord Crinitus' wagon. Imudon, Lady Volentia, you have another task.'

'Truly delighted to hear I'm of use.' I didn't bother to hide irony.

'The one with a mark, the other who got rid of it, both less vulnerable to daemonic oracles,' said Lord Mentor. 'What I heard from the captive…'

'Who was so kind to give you a new groove.' The sorcerer looked down at us, the gull helmet in his hands, smiling innocently.

'Shut up. I haven't asked you any questions.'

'How rude. No wonder your kind is called pariahs, and wiser parents get rid of their sour blank kids before they learn to grumble admonishments.' Giggling, the sorcerer stepped aside, and a rope ladder slipped down to the chamber.

Lord Mentor probed it first, then waved to Aphedron. 'You are the first to get out. Pterophyllo is waiting in the rocks out of the camp. You were taught how to take cover.'

Before climbing the ladder, I found my armaments in the corner and put them back in their places with my only working hand. There was a pile of old clothes in the corner, so I picked up a faded cloak of black velvet to throw over my military garb.

'Good,' the sorcerer hummed approvingly. 'I can waste less psychic power for camouflage.'

'Maximum precautions. Miss Inquisitor, Imudon, you're expected to sneak to the ventilation to plant a few recording drones.'

'My lord, you have yet to tell us where we're heading,' I said.

'To be an utter nuisance for my already messy job,' said the sorcerer. 'The Warmaster has ordered the superior of his psykers to arrange a council to check what's ready. It's about to start.'

'The Panther isn't book smart but he feels that things are getting hot for him,' Imudon grunted.

'It's easier without him,' the sorcerer said with a sigh. 'He'd freak out just at the sight of the man on the other side.'

'I'd better follow you. One cultist among many is a needle in a haystack. I've done that for countless times. Up to you to make them think about everything apart from tiny figures fussing around.'

'Risky,' Lord Mentor said.

'An inquisitor's job is one lifelong risk.'

He stepped towards the sorcerer. 'Swear to cover her retreat.'

'By the ashes of our sweet home.'

Imudon chuckled. 'The former Warmaster had no guts to burn your homeworld to ashes. Neither does the current one.'

The sorcerer pulled a grimace of mock excuse under the glare of Lord Mentor's crimson lenses. 'I shall stand by the exit so you took care.'

Squads of marines and crowds of cultist loiterers were gathering around a giant bunker in the middle of the camp that served as a strategium and an officer mess. Once a shining dome that could host the whole company under its gilded vault, now the side columns had need charred, marines and their hangers-on had scribbled obscene graffiti on the walls. As we were walking along the wall towards the entrance, an empty bottle flew out of a molten breach. With a snap of his fingers the sorcerer evaporated it and chuckled looking at the wisp of coloured smoke dissolving in the air. Bottle splinters and ration packs left from previous gatherings were crunching under our boots.

Before the crowded entrance I squinted back at Lord Mentor's horned shape walking after a squad of assault marines. When I turned to the sorcerer, he was already gone. Sneaking between chattering and drinking cultists, I hurried towards the center where the Warpsmith was instructing his menials checking the holoprojector of a big cogitator. He had soared to the very vault, clamouring orders in binary so loudly I had to cover my ears.

The sorcerer was standing at the central column, the gull helmet already on his head, billowing smoke rising to the Warpsmith's roost from the bird head on his staff. I stepped over an air hole in the floor, rubbing my arm to ease the last cramps. Imudon must be already there, waiting for the council to start.

A heavy hand slapped me on the back. I stopped, my hand on the pistol hilt. A masked enginseer gave me a nudge towards a table next to the cogitator stand. Cultists were taking metal jars from a greasy plate and filling them from two tall kegs.

'Oil is for tech-adepts, spirit is for the marines,' his facial speakers screeched out with effort.

When everyone's wearing oxygen masks, it's easy to take one for another. Before he could suspect anything, I saluted and ran forward to take my place in the queue. Like the others, I took two jars and put them under the keg taps. Thanks to Lord Mentor for the mask again, I thought looking at the yellowish moonshine and black oil dripping into the jars.

'Tempted to try a cocktail?' a young cultist who stood behind me took two more jars.

'Ought to call it the Legion Colours,' I said.

'The name'll fit even better if you piss in it. Even that'll make this crap taste better.'

'Quicker, you bastards!' the enginseer shouted. 'Lass, you go to the right side. You guy - to the dataslate stand.'

Oil in the right hand, booze in the left, I repeated heading to the opposite edge of the central platform where two veteran sergeants and a techmarine were guarding the cogitator's memory unit. The techmarine extended his mechadendrite with a flask not even looking at me, and I poured him oil. For a couple of minutes I watched him drink with a content half-smile on his face.

The Warpsmith raised both hands, and sirens of his throne gave out a bloodcurdling howl. He frowned and put on his helmet. Silence fell over the packed hall. The sorcerer walked out with his lazy grace and drew an arcane symbol in the air with his staff. Glowing contours of the sigil started twisting and unfurling, psychic frost was growing over the columns and walls.

'Legion brothers, dare not to give out a word unless asked to, as the Warmaster's honoured envoy will speak to us now!' the Warpsmith announced in his most solemn tone.

The air was growing colder, bluish mist was condensing over the high rostrum in the center. Psychic tension was so strong that sparks of warp energy were cracking all over the place. Finally, the sorcerer drew the final emblem and froze leaning on his staff. The mist formed a majestic shape of a warlord in power armour.

His high-crested whimsical helmet reminded of ancient headdresses favoured by scions of Prospero. No surprise, fighters from warbands of both traitor and Imperial stock had been coming to the Despoiler's banners for millennia. A smoky silhouette of a giant feline curled around his feet, one open eye scanning the gathered warriors. The warlord gripped the pommel of his force sword with a swift gesture too nervous for his stature. His voice, amplified by sorcery, echoed in the vault.

'I, Lord Vigilator of the Warmaster's host, am speaking to his faithful men on his behalf.'

A wistful tenor I hadn't expected from a lord feared even by the Panther. 'He ordered me to bring him the latest news on the Evernight.'

The Warpsmith drove the throne closer. At his sign the projector lit up, and I saw a three-dimensional model of the daemonic ship. Columns of figures and notes were sliding on both sides of the model as the Warpsmith was wheezing out his lengthy report. Lord Vigilator met every passage with a reserved nod. From time to time he asked questions about a particular ritual or detail, and the Warpsmith had the demonstration put on pause so the guest could study the data.

Visibly bored, the sorcerer was strolling to and fro along the other side waving his staff like a golden youth dandy with a walking cane. The guest's psychic might was so strong the sorcerer didn't have to bother anymore after he had established the connection.

Once in a few minutes another marine or tech-adept beckoned me, and I filled their goblets and flasks with their favoured beverages.

When the Warpsmith finished the report, Lord Vigilator shook his head with disapproval. 'The Warmaster needs the battleship for the oncoming campaign against the Cadian strongholds. You have had a whole year but all you have done was the excavation and partial awakening of the reactor.'

'We needed sacrifices, my lord,' the Warpsmith muttered sourly. 'More sacrifices. You know, this region isn't very populated. The genestealer horde has driven most of our loyal trading captains away. We tried feeding the mutants to the ship. It doesn't do well for the reactor. There have been accidents with Imperial and Aeldari agents attacking our men and the ship itself. Once, for example, a disguised Imperial Inquisitor…'

'Sorry, sir,' Lord Vigilator's tone got dry. 'Haven't Captain Pyrd got a strict prohibition of further genestealer experiments from the Warmaster himself?'

'The mutants don't care a damn about orders, if you don't mind, my lord. They keep on swarming the place, even the craziest sailors have descended to the surface.'

'I will report to the Warmaster and the commander circle of the Legion about the problem. And now, what measures are you going to take to satisfy the Warmaster on his visit?'

The Warpsmith clapped his hands, relieved by the change of topics. 'My lord, we have means aplenty. The conjuror-priest sent by the Word Bearers is doing his job in a perfect way. Recently, we have stumbled upon the idea of a daring raid to Craftworld Ulthwe to fetch their famous crystalline choir so their souls sated the ship's hunger.'

'You don't have enough armed forces for a direct attack. And the Warmaster needs his men at the Cadian gate.'

'By His Majesty's…' the Warpsmith stopped abruptly at Lord Vigilator's sinister cough but corrected himself quickly, 'by Captain Pyrd's order, the priest has captured three Aeldari saboteurs sent to Pholiotina. We'll force them to lead a raid party through one of Ulthwe's warp gates. Let me present them before the eyes of your lordship.'

The sorcerer gave out a quick muffled chuckle. I froze on the spot and poured oil into the mug in a marine's outstretched hand. How could I have missed the absence of the dark priest? Completely forgotten about his existence? The marine coughed up a mouthful of oil and swung his gauntlet at me but startled at the Warpsmith's yell.

'What the friggin' hell?'

Slowly and solemnly, the Dark Apostle passed between the hushed loiterers, not a shadow of unrest on his effeminate coy face. His psychic glance fell upon my soul, and I leaned on a column shivering. His crimson suit was as clean as new, blasphemous scrolls of his new rank streamed in the wind, sulphurous smoke was rising over his backpack torches, and I felt its stench even through the mask. A few steps behind him, the Corsair was limping like a puppet, bloody tears running down his pale face.

Lord Vigilator's feline warp-familiar gave out a hiss, and its psychic projection phased out.

'I guess, the others are under interrogation in the Headsman's wagon,' the Warpsmith said with fake confidence.

My mind hazy, I couldn't catch a single word from the Dark Apostle's crooning speech. The sorcerer straightened up staring at Lord Vigilator and the Dark Apostle, his relaxed posture gone. Trying to recall any prayer, I looked at the crowd to find Lord Mentor among the marines. Even the tech-adepts and legionnaires around put aside their mugs and stood gaping as if bewitched by the Dark Apostle's aura. Pain distorted the Corsair's features, and he fell to his knees while the Dark Apostle was speaking on and on.

All of a sudden the sorcerer tossed up his staff and clapped his hands. The bird head gave out a shriek.

'Beware, good sirs!' the sorcerer shouted. 'Servants of the Corpse-Emperor are watching us! Enemies among us!'

The Dark Apostle's words drowned in a burst of yells and cusses. Despite the presence of the guest, sergeants rushed to all exits bellowing orders to their squads, cultists scurried between them pointlessly, overturning tables and bumping into one another.

I squinted at the center of the platform and met my enemy's gaze. Blood pounding in my temples, I slipped between the columns, away from the treacherous sorcerer. Lord Mentor was nowhere near, so I threw my mugs under the boots of a few approaching marines and dove into the cultist crowd to get to the closest exit. When I leapt on a table by the wall, I saw the sorcerer talking to Lord Vigilator with the Corsair unconscious at his feet. The Dark Apostle had vanished.

The exit was already closed, a squad of space marines searching a band of cultists who wanted to break out of the hall. A cultist tried to climb the wall to crawl out through a breach but a tech-adept's mechadendrite coiled around his neck. The half-strangled cultist wheezed and howled clawing at the metal string as the tech-adept hurried towards the Warpsmith.

'My lord, a suspect!' the tech-adept shouted and threw the arrested cultist to the floor.

I leapt aside but a ventilation grate cracked under my feet. Before I could give out a cuss, a strong hand pulled me down by the ankle. Once again, I only thought when a gauntlet was put over my mouth, and the stranger dragged me away.


	20. Episode 3 Chapter 3

Dim light showed up in the distant end of the ventilation tunnel, and a fresh wind blew in from the outside. Ice cracked under the stranger's heavy steps as he strode on with superhuman speed, carrying me on his shoulder. As the darkness grew thinner, I finally saw the colour of his armour. The plain grey of Knights-Errant and outcasts.

'If a year ago anyone told me I'd be glad to see you,' I told Imudon adjusting the mask that had slipped again.

'Nothing remains the same nowadays,' he answered after a pause. 'Only the bird's so much like himself.'

'Wonder why he's played that trick. To piss off the old blank?'

'That's just a pleasant bonus. He had something to tell his former gene-brother. Or hear something from him while the others are busy about everything else.'

I recalled the encounter in the hall, and even brief memories hurt. 'The… person we both know has noticed me.'

'Be careful. If he tempts you to try killing me again…'

'You'll fulfil your old dream and finish me.' I chuckled.

He climbed up the shaft into the cold night and put me on the ground. 'It's nearly dawn. We have to leave the planet before daybreak.'

The camp was left far behind, only the Evernight, a cloud of murk among the peaks, still towered over us as if it had swollen even worse since yesterday. The owl was parked at the rock wall near the shaft exit, a few miles away from the place where we'd left it.

Angel stepped out from behind the owl, bolter in hand, but stopped and nodded on seeing us.

'Lady Volentia, delighted to see you safe and sound.'

'It's okay to be less official when only crew members are present,' I said amicably. As I was to blame for his initial hostility towards my former bitter foe, I had to force some teambuilding.

He opened the owl door without arguing. 'Lord Mentor has already returned, he's watching the recordings from the traitor council with Fluffster. Can't wait to get back to our friends.'

His sudden fondness for our crew warmed my heart after the latest weeks of strained silence and nostalgy for his old life. I looked into the owl with a feeling of family calm returned for a second. The reality was far less comforting. My cot was taken by the xenos, already dressed in their armour suits, Aphedron was sitting on Uncle's cot near the cabin watching the cogitator screen over Fluffster's shoulder. Fluffster himself was engaged in an intriguing discussion with Lord Mentor in an unknown language of old.

I took off the mask and waved my hand. 'Greetings to the good company.'

Aphedron met us with a broad grin. 'Will you deny that you've become a glorious Radical? You're not yelling in terror when two nasty xenos have taken over your van!'

Both Aeldari turned their elongated helmets to us in synchrony. The Farseer's cold psychic glance fell upon me. 'Everyone is here. Let us travel to Ulthwe without delay so we could trace the strands of fate further before the Great Enemy's touch tangles them.'

'The owl's overloaded, Fluffster,' I said. 'It's not a damn Thunderhawk.'

'Do you really think I'll ignore that?' he said, undisturbed. 'A lighter will arrive from the Righteous Wrath in minutes. We're taking one of Lord Mentor's escort ships for the trip. They'd already taken Panaque from the Stumblebum.'

I crossed my arms. 'Just Panaque?'

'He had served with Ordo Xenos before they transferred him to Ordo Machinum. A bit of useful experience for his future career.'

'We cannot embark without Uncle and Sister.'

'You want to have Uncle killed by another freakout? Most citizens of the modern Imperium aren't meant to visit alien worlds. Even most of those serving the Inquisition.'

'Still cutting me off from the already estranged family.'

'Angel is going with us. And me, if you remember that I'm the second oldest member of your crew after Uncle,' Fluffster said in a conciliatory tone but Lord Mentor slapped on the table.

'Inquisitor, it is a disgrace to your rank to pester an honoured agent of Terra with your petty complaints. He has agreed to play this comedy with enlisting to your crew for a big purpose but he is worth more than your whole Ordo.'

'Sir, well, it's just a good old etiquette rule to pay at least a deal of respect if you visit someone's house,' I said with a smile despite the heebie-jeebies. 'Ask the Emperor why He decided to let all Inquisitors be independent agents.'

'Teach someone else to be polite. No polite men survived the Old Night.'

A pit opened in my stomach at the touch of his null field. Even the Aeldari cringed. Aphedron pulled a sour grimace and reached for a bottle of amasec in Uncle's minibar.

I returned to the door and sat near the exit. Before I could recuperate, the rocks around shuddered. There was a signal beep, a clang of locks, and then I heard cautious footsteps behind the owl. On shaky legs, with a scarf pulled over his mouth and nose, Panaque walked around the owl and waved both hands.

'Back in action!' After a while, his voice sounded almost as vivid as before. 'I asked the stormtroopers to take Uncle and Sister in but they're as numb and dumb as tin soldiers.'

He dove into the owl and quickly took a place next to our old fridge. A smile lit up his face when the fridge door opened, but withered almost at once.

'Uncle told me we had a whole chunk of ham left. And two packs of fruit.'

'This happens when your crew gets a fresh replenishment,' Aphedron answered with a smug grin. 'I'd advise you to keep to your hospital diet for some time.'

'Shut up, everyone!' Lord Mentor roared from his place. 'A minute of this record means more for the case than all your worthless blabbering.'

'Mentor, we all were young once,' said Fluffster. 'You should have been quite a rowdy youth, if Peachy's to believe.'

'I'd already got rid of my antics when we left our tribe to embark for the Sanctuary.' Lord Mentor's voice softened. 'These are not the days to play the fool.'

I breathed in and out, looked up at the ceiling. 'Sir.' I had to put all efforts so that my voice sounded firm. 'You have heard that the Despoiler is coming to the planet. The Panther's henchmen will ensure that every threat to their overlord is eliminated.'

'So?' Lord Mentor narrowed his eyes.

'Staying here means death to my acolytes.'

'My own retinue will be able to take them away from the Stumblebum if needed.'

'If dying, then all together. You cannot force me to abandon my men. I'll stay myself if you refuse.'

He frowned. 'The Dark Apostle's aware of your presence. I have more important business here than pulling you out of this mess.'

'Your ship certainly has room for two more reliable agents. Indisputably loyal to the Imperium.' I decided to use the most convincing words. 'I will order them to stay in during the whole visit to Ulthwe. They will obey their boss.'

Fluffster nodded and patted me on the shoulder. 'Between us, Tamias' loyalty is dubious at best, Mentor. If he decides to win back the Panther's grace…'

'I told you that earlier,' said Lord Mentor. 'Think about the risks.'

'Sons of the Old Night won't yield even in minor things,' Fluffster said with a chuckle.

'Younger successors are prone to spoiling their apprentices,' Lord Mentor grunted but typed a few words in the message field of his wrist-mounted screen.

Fluffster shook his head. 'Well, spend some more sweet time with your crew while we're still together, Volentia. The war against the Panther won't last for long. You'll see why if Lord Ulthran allows you to attend the council.'

'Does he know about the Casbah? About the thing that's taken over the Panthers ship?' I repeated the same question I had asked for many times, more to take part in the conversation than to get an unlikely honest answer.

The Farseer spoke instead. 'None of your race possesses knowledge as vast as his. But it would be unwise and discourteous to demand more answers than he's willing to grant you.'

I sighed. 'Just in case, ma'am. A curious thing that has caused some nuisance for me and the gallant gentleman in purple.'

'The Weeping Seer of Altansar spent many cycles pondering,' Eitleog said through clenched teeth. 'Pondering over the mysteries we had witnessed before the palace of the Beast.'

'You're talkative like hell today, bonehead.' Aphedron stared into the narrow eye-slits of the Exarch's helmet.

Lord Mentor gave him a jab in the back. 'They are our guests.'

'This word is a nice description of the fellow's skull helmet, isn't it? Numbskull fits even better.'

A stormtrooper in plain black armour looked in. 'My lord, the Raptor Imperialis is ready for departure. Two of the marines may take their places. The Palatine and the mercenary have already arrived.'

Lord Mentor got up and reached for his golden-horned helmet. 'Fine. Send me a few words after every landing, Crinitus.'

The Raptor Imperialis, a swift and perfectly equipped frigate, had a crew of veteran sailors, two navigators and an astropathic choir of ten powerful psykers. Our compartment of eight pristine rooms was located right between the protected astropath quarters and the main passage to the bridge.

I threw my bag on a glossy leatherette couch in the compartment mess, and Uncle handed me a lunchbox.

'Have a snack, lassie. Sure, the big goons have devoured everything from the fridge.' He put one remaining box back to the package. 'The big mouse ain't gonna have a breakfast today, like always. I say, lassie, first he wanted to leave us in the trading bucket. Then suddenly changed his mind, the Emperor knows why.'

'Lord Mentor didn't want you to get around his negotiations with xenos,' I said. 'Fluffster was the one to speak for you.'

'All forbidden things are not so forbidden if you have a rosette, already got it,' Uncle grumbled.

Panaque swallowed another spoonful and half-closed his eyes smiling. 'I wish I had seen Iarmailt with my own eyes. The older acolytes said, drawings of craftworlds don't show even a bit of their beauty.'

'Iarmailt was more of a wasteland,' I said. 'With mean hungry dwellers.'

'I'll ask Aphedron when he comes back for lunch. When we were sailing away from Colomesus, he promised to tell about his escape from Biel-Tan with a Banshee.'

'Last time I heard this tale, there were Commorragh and a wych. And a big load of junk,' said Uncle. 'Not something to listen open-mouthed.'

Days passed after days in the warp. For the sake of safety and, more important, Lord Mentor's paranoia, Fluffster didn't reveal any hints on the route. All we were allowed to study was a scant archive of ship documents accessed from the room screens. Panaque, a member of Ordo Machinum, found even that curious.

'That's not a Martian pattern,' he told me once we opened the archive in the mess room. He zoomed through the holo-projection of the ship over the table and pointed at the reactor. 'My late boss had us practice technical drawing by copying drafts from his manual with different software applications. Once I had to draw three large models of this Inwit-made reactor in a single weekend.'

'Peculiar STCs?' I asked reading through the description.

He winked at us. 'Something more suspicious, said to be produced without the Mechanicus' control. He wanted to have a look at their machinations one day. Even sent a suggestion to the Segmentum authorities. Everyone prayed as one so that the big dogs allowed us to leave that sour scrapyard.'

My last ball of yarn and the last unread book on my dataslate came to an end in three standard days. Every file of the archive had been browsed, even boring old movies from the ship library now brought a deal of life to our monotonous days. But for Panaque, strain and boredom would have killed us long before servants of Chaos could even give it a try.

The Raptor Imperialis left the warp in the end of the night without any warning. I woke up at a jolt and sat up to take a peek at the wall screen. To my surprise, it reacted to the inquisitorial password. It showed a small part of a star map still within the borders of the Imperial space. I found the vox bead under my pillow.

'Fluffster, are you here in your room? Come to the mess.'

He answered in a second. 'Better you come to the bridge, if you're so curious. Three hours left until the landing, plenty of time to open your eyes and brace yourselves.'

I pulled on my tunic and field pants and put my rosette to the room lock. Uncle, already in full gear, stood in the middle of the corridor with a heavy hellgun in hands.

'Looks like boarding. Grab your weapons, lassie. Angel's run away to the entrance to blow the bastards up. If they didn't turn off the screens, we'd see them at once.'

I blinked at his flashlight and stifled a yawn. 'Relax, Uncle. We all should have got used to Fluffster's antics. He has brought us to some Imperial system and wants us to join him on the surface.'

'Fie. That's why the two goons haven't returned to the rooms by night. What else has he told you?'

'We've got a bit less than three hours to spruce up. Let's brew some coffee before the landing.'

My motley crew had occupied the owl as in good old days when Fluffster hobbled down from his observation post on the bridge. To their relief, the owl didn't have enough room for the two ex-enemies, and even Sister's new garb didn't ruin the nostalgic atmosphere of our previous operations. Panaque fit it better than me, I had to admit without sharing the sad thought with the others.

'Count yourself lucky if your Ordo sends you away from here to hunt for wraithbone charms on countryside markets,' I told him.

He gave out a laugh. 'You think I don't deserve proper adventures, ma'am?'

'The coolest adventures all start like this, believe a more seasoned colleague. Those with an exciting beginning always have a cheerless end.'

Fluffster stuffed a piece of processed cheese into the corner of his jaw. 'The end of one adventure is just the beginning of a new one.'

A notification window popped up over the star map on the owl screen. I leaned over the control panels and touched the screen to open the message. An emblem of the Blood Angels was the first to appear. Sure where this was going, I scrolled down to the end to see the already familiar name.

'You brought us here to have another friendly talk with Captain Aphael, Fluffster.'

Angel jumped up from his seat and hung over me. 'My brothers are here. Please, let me fight by their side once again.'

Fluffster tapped on the arrow in the lower corner to get back to the first lines. 'Both yes and no, Volentia. There are other acquaintances to meet.' He clicked on a passage and highlighted it in bright red.

'We were defending the cave keep against an overwhelming horde of mutants when the xenos deputy asked for a parley. I ordered to ignore the first calls as it looked like an obvious trap. Then the xenos army engaged the main force of the genestealers. When one of mutant bands broke into the keep, we had to negotiate on the second offer.'

'Ulthwe?' I asked. 'If you let me talk to your Aeldari guests at least once…'

'There are other parties to have their interest in this matter. The Menkhet dynasty has contacted the Silent King recently.'

'Holy shit.' I recalled the small green cube left in my locker on the Stumblebum. 'If they have found out about the epic death of Blackred DM, we're screwed. As always, you haven't warned me. Your knife-eared friends might also make a scene of jealousy if they see you cooing to their worst enemies.'

An incoming request lit up in the corner of the screen, and Angel accepted it before I could say a word. 'Captain, do you copy? Sergeant Pterophyllo on the line. Waiting for your orders.'

A muffled voice broke through the atmospherics. 'The infestation is nearly suppressed, sergeant. The only remaining pesthole is currently under attack by our forces as well as the xenos. If your superior doesn't object, you're welcome.'

'Aye, sir!' Angel started tapping on the panels. The star system gave way to a detailed map of the planetary surface. He typed in a set of coordinates from the communication log, and the map zoomed in to show a rocky desert with a dry riverbed on the bottom of a deep canyon. Purple dots of genestealer bands were concentrated in the far end of the canyon, in and around a vast grotto. The Blooded, led by their famous love for melee, blocked their way out while the Necrons were firing on the mutants from ledges of the canyon walls.

The owl entered the atmosphere. Beside us another lighter was descending to the surface. Where we're going, the two will always follow. Uncle grabbed his hellgun and hurried to a loophole but Fluffster headed to the door with Angel, his volkite weapon under his arm. Panaque took his place at the controls.

'The Phaerakh and the cryptek are waiting for me over the canyon,' Fluffster said checking his vox. 'You'd better stay in until I give you a sign. This is a bad place, worse than many. Rocks are safer, the gorge is to be avoided by all costs.'

'But you're letting Angel to fight there.'

'This is his trial and challenge.'

A faint musky odour wafted out of the owl vents. Startled, I ran to Angel who had taken his helmet from the armour rack. His fangs bared, his eyes red, he still tried to hide the ominous excitement that was overtaking him. The hot wind blew stronger as we had reached the rocks, and he licked his lips.

'We'll throw you out if you decide to snack on any of us.' My voice failed me. My wrist bitten long ago on the way to the Casbah ached again, dull pain in the midriff was growing stronger.

'I need to combat His foes alongside my brothers,' he answered in a cold, firm voice and clenched his fist. Hunger cast a shadow over his troubled aura but he stood still as a statue, staring at the door. Fluffster leaned on the wall tracing the descent on the screen.

'Ten metres to the point. Speed down.' Panaque nodded from his seat, and in a few seconds the owl stopped hovering level with the canyon wall.

Fluffster leapt out into the red light of the local moon and walked towards a steep path that led down to a wide shaded ledge. Angel soared to the moon on his jump pack and plunged into the murk of the gorge. Almost at the same time the lighter with Imudon and Aphedron slid down past us. I told Panaque to follow them.

The red moonlight died out at once when the giant maw of the canyon swallowed us. Far ahead, green flashes of necron guns lit up on the ledges, too distant to disperse the darkness. For the sake of camouflage, we didn't turn on the owl lights, relying on the augurs.

The further we descended, the worse got the signal. First the map started blinking and distorting, cracks and howling noises came from the vox speakers, then the contours of the map dissolved into plain statics. The howls grew louder, and reddish shapes appeared on the screen. Theroid shapes from the golden gates of the Casbah.

Freezing with supernatural fear, I turned off the map screen. Nothing happened for a quarter of an hour, then battlecries and sounds of gunfire reached our ears. Under the owl, close enough to see with our own eyes, the Blooded clashed with the mutants, both sides overwhelmed by the frenzy of the place.

A suffocating smell of musk and ambergris filled the owl. My midriff spasmed, and I grabbed a paper bag from the cot. Sister handed me a medicine vial but I shook my head and picked up a heavy stubber from Uncle's locker. My head heavy, I barely reached the loophole and closed my eyes for a few seconds to recuperate after a violent bout of vertigo.

When I looked down, my three fighters ran out of the murk right under my side of the owl. Along with an assault squad of the Blood Angels, they cornered a band of mutants three times their numbers. Furious as war demigods, Angel and Aphedron hacked their way through the foes while Imudon's bolter fire mowed down all mutants who dared to come closer.

We joined the fray with our scant weapons, more to support our friends than to be of real use. My vox bead was still silent, and I didn't dare to ask Fluffster questions before he finished his business.

The skirmish ended fast. Panaque turned on the lights. With yells of wild joy, the victorious Blood Angels rushed towards the canyon end, stepping over ripped genestealer corpses scattered around. Angel raised his lightning claw above his head, and his roar echoed in the gorge. Before them the path was getting narrower, low ledges on both sides forming an arch over their heads. As beams of light fell on the arch, glints of bright silver nearly dazzled us. A flawless column of necron soldiers had lined up over the path, holding the squad at gunpoint.

A wall of fire unfurled behind the marines. Discharges of energy cracked all over the rocks, and an eerie silhouette stepped out of the flames, rocking on thin spider legs. The stranger had an upper body of a necron overlord with a faded dynasty emblem on the breastplate. An only eye shone on the necron's polished face, the xeno raised a staff topped with a radiant fiery sphere.

The marines stopped. As if struck by terror, they froze in their places. The necron walked up to Angel and touched his carapace.

'That's neither of our acquaintances,' I whispered to my crew. 'Fluffster didn't mention any other Overlords joining the queen. This one doesn't look particularly friendly.'

'Please call up Fluffster,' Sister pointed at my vox.

I pressed on the bead. Beeps. No answer. The necron had already herded the Blood Angels to a wall niche while Imudon and Aphedron remained staring down the barrels of a hundred Gauss rifles. I tugged at the locker under the control panel. Fluffster had borrowed an interpreter device from the Righteous Wrath after we left Pholiotina, so if I was lucky, he hadn't taken it with him. The small metal box lay on the bottom, under a pile of memory cards and crumpled cheese wrappings. I fixed it on my collar and gave Panaque a nudge.

'Turn on the loudspeaker.' I cleared my throat and leaned to the microphone. 'I speak on behalf of Lord Crinitus who has arrived here at the invitation of Phaerakh Nebetnesert. These men are his allies, and the Phaerakh has chosen to join forces to fight a common foe.'

The necron's eye turned to the owl. Only one word came through the statics. 'So?'

'If you belong to her host, it is against the treaty with the Silent King himself to assault our men.'

Screeching laughter was the necron's answer. 'I don't care a damn about the old king, his mad queen or any of their worthless Phaerons. I've come here for my own goals, and your men will make better use for my research than for the petty cares of younger races. Get away to your Crinitus.'

I clenched my jaws, tears burning my eyes. Damn beeps in the vox. All of a sudden, a crooning voice sounded in my mind. 'I alone know the way. This is a mean ancient cryptek, and even the cricetid is powerless before him. Forget our strife and the fuss around the Evernight for a moment. I've bestowed you with my greatest gift. Let me speak for you.'

There was no other way to choose. I closed my eyes. 'Friggin' do that.'

'For a service in return,' said the Dark Apostle. 'You'll have to carry out a single request.'

'None concerning my crew. Even Imudon.'

'You're just losing your precious time. But agreed. Not a word to the cricetid.'

Dry cough blew up my lungs, and words in an unknown language burst out of my throat.


	21. Episode 3 Chapter 4

My crew sat immobile, their eyes open wide. The device gave out a hiss instead of a translation, and a thin spiral of smoke oozed through the speaker. The cryptek gripped his staff with both hands but the sphere of fire turned crimson like the wisps of the Chaos shrine. He threw it down to the ground with a guttural growl.

'A hundred, a thousand curses upon you and your minions, ever-hated gaoler!' The half-broken device spat out his last phrase and fell down from my collar to the panel. Painfully bright orange fire enveloped the cryptek, then his host atop the arch, and the xenos were gone. When the last sparks died out, my friends stirred rubbing their eyes.

'As if a sonic blast has swept through the owl,' said Panaque. 'My ears still ring.'

The incident now seemed unreal. Just a bad dream. 'Does anyone remember what exactly has happened here?'

'The xeno told us to bugger off. Then a terrifying noise hit my eardrums. When I looked out, the necrons have left. Probably Fluffster has some cool trumps up his sleeve.'

I decided not to give them cause for further suspicions. 'Probably. Let's get down to have a few words with the marines and pick up the ours. Wait for me in the owl.'

Panaque squinted at Uncle and Sister sitting still in embarrassment in the back end of the owl, then typed in a few commands. The owl landed between the arch and the gathered marines who'd just come to themselves after the assault. Angel swung his power claw at the jolt behind his back but then waved to his squad and ran to the owl.

Dizzy at the musk stench, I hobbled out first. My flashlight beam slid across the rock wall, and my bowels shriveled. Carved all over the surface and painted blood red, monstrous beasts seemed to twist and leer as if about to throw themselves on us. Angel put his arm around my shoulders and turned me away from the ominous panel.

'It's poisonous to look at. Like the shrine that corrupted the Panther.' He paused a few moments, then said in a low, wistful voice. 'And me.'

I gave him a thumbs-up. 'At last, you're totally adequate. Sure you won't scare us in the future.'

'Not the thing to make fun about, sister. It's true that we of the Ninth are monsters and beasts but struggling together to get closer to our sire's angelic essence. I've faced the horrid ancient thirst, only my elder brethren can help me overcome it. Only leading the younger ones, I can get my power and honour back.'

'Their influence has made you recall your Chaplain's sermons,' I said quietly still trying to ease the tension with a joke that didn't look funny.

'Space marines are raised to live as monks and fight as a host of blood brothers under the watchful eyes of their officers and Chaplains. To be on the frontlines to protect mankind from enemies other Imperial forces cannot withstand.'

He extended his hand, and I shook his gauntlet. 'We've been with you in your direst years, Angel. Pulled you out when you were about to slip into the Black Rage.'

'And you all are as dear to me as my Chapter. But for you, I couldn't have got back to what I should be.'

I smiled despite the bitterness of the talk. 'Our current business is yet to be finished. We need your devotion and military skills in the clash with the Black Legion pirates.'

'Sister has sworn to stay until then, so do I. Now let me join my company for just a while. I'll come back before departure.'

The older marines had taken off their helmets to have a few sips of brandy. Aphedron had sat down on a boulder and leaned on the rock wall with his flask in the outstretched hand like a beachside lounger. He waved to me.

'The new generation cannot wipe their noses without asking their Chaplains whether it's heresy.'

'He's not the only one in my crew to run away,' I said opening my own flask to subdue the musk-induced sickness with booze.

'If this is a gentle hint, we both are totally for running away. Give us an idea how to lull the cricetid's vigilance.'

'Very funny.' I shook my head. 'He wants to dismiss all my acolytes except you.'

He smirked. 'So we'll bury our wonderful careers to be nannies for a rookie cop.'

'Not quite a rookie after these years.'

'Tell that to a man who entered the legion ranks a hundred centuries ago.'

Deep cracks in the ground belched out puffs of hot vapour. A sudden gust of sultry air nearly blew me off my feet. The red dye on the carvings seemed to glow through the rising steam. Aphedron spat on the ground and frowned.

'Life is so sweet to never let me forget the dumbest idea of ascension I took seriously.' He gave a nudge to Imudon who was watching the talk with a poker face. 'Closemouthed fellow, I bet it has awakened beastly lust even in your saintly hearts.'

Imudon answered with a heavy-lidded stare. 'When we come back, Lord Mentor will cool down the yours with a good doze of chemicals.'

'That's not a part of His Plan, no matter what can one think on seeing the little red angels.'

'Are you sure?'

I chuckled. 'Aphedron, compare the little red angel in the times of your friendship with the Vulpine Princess and now.'

'I told you that when you pouted about how he doesn't dance to your piping anymoreò.'

'You see the real Sergeant Pterophyllo now, not then,' said Imudon. 'He's faced the curse of this place and won. His old guilt is redeemed.'

A shrill whistle interrupted him. Panaque leaned out of the owl window waving both hands. 'Are we gonna settle here forever?'

When we headed to the owl, Imudon slowed his pace and beckoned me.

'A ghastly secret to share?' I whispered into his ear.

'How have you repelled the xenos? The Blood Angels remember nothing after the hypnosis but we both saw his terror and heard his last words.'

'I called up Fluffster, like in the War-Shrine of Iarmailt. Ask Aphedron.'

He stared into my eyes. 'Lie.'

I pulled a forced smile. 'I'll entrust enquiries and suspect interrogations to you in future.'

'I have millennia-long experience.' He put his gauntlet on my shoulder when I prepared to jump into the owl to avoid the slippery topic. 'I had to master xeno languages.'

'The necrons were sleeping for most of this time.'

'That's the old speech of their ancestors. When my warhost once troubled a tomb-world, the First Acolyte pacified the Overlord with a single phrase, and the xeno cursed back exactly like the cryptek before retreating to his halls.'

'Panaque!' I shouted. 'Send a message to Fluffster. He's silent for so long I'm afraid the xenos have already abducted him.'

Imudon frowned but let me go. 'We'll talk later. I hope, before your hasty decision dooms you.'

I wanted to tell Imudon that I'd even mentioned his safety as a special condition of the deal but forced myself to keep silence. The risk had been justified. The owl started climbing up to the clifftop path where we'd parted with Fluffster. Uncle and Sister sat around me asking about Angel, and I felt fear vanish as the musky smell was wearing out. Stirring up condensed milk in my mug of recaff, I closed my eyes as drowse was overwhelming me.

Loud beeps of the vox nearly made me drop the mug. I put it on the wall shelf and pressed on the bead to redirect the call to the control panel loudspeaker.

'I thought I'd lost you,' Fluffster said. 'What the hell were you doing in the canyon? Signals from the above cannot reach the bottom.'

'There were problems down there. If the queen is still here, ask her what other necron big guys are hanging around.'

There were cracks of statics for about a minute, then Fluffster's voice returned. 'Turn on the augurs and head to the coordinates I'll send you.'

Barren rocklands above the canyon were basked in red moonlight. The giant scarlet disk was slowly descending to sharp peaks of a mountain ridge on the horizon. Spots of brown lichen covered stones in the shadow of large boulders and crags where hot springs were bubbling in crevices. In a boiling pool of sulphurous water I glimpsed a snake-like shape that disappeared in the depths when the owl shadow fell over the surface. We passed over a plateau ruined by cannon blasts where barrows of rubble buried the remains of a whole genestealer army. Their charred corpses stuck out of stone piles, molten splinters of their armaments glittered here and there under the moon.

Over the battle-wreckage towered a cyclopean fortress carved into an ancient volcano. Cooled lava flows formed a giant gate with columns, and sharp obsidian chunks hung over the entrance like a fanged jaw. Countless silhouettes of beasts covered the black outer walls, twisting around tall narrow windows. Bodies of heavily armed purestrain hybrids lay in a horrid rampart before the gate, their elongated heads all turned towards the maw open wide to devour any who approached it.

Our headlights let us see but a tiny spot of the whole giant hall when the owl flew under the dark vaults. The murk had condensed so thickly it seemed to absorb light and sounds. We were moving along a side wall past endless theroid statues of basalt and obsidian. In one place there was a massive stone cup with a thick layer of soot and a pile of crumbling bones inside. The augurs showed nonsense again but the owl stuck to the pre-set course. Blindly it drifted through the dark for a whole eternity. My head got heavy, and I could barely hold myself upright. Slumber was falling over my crew, even the marines had settled back against the walls.

'Playing hide and seek inside a volcano.' Panaque emptied two packs of instant recaff into his mug. 'Every second a band of mean metal skellies might leap out to scare the pants off our team.'

'Have you seen any?' I asked.

'In vid-logs. They have no sense of humour, my mentor had warned me before we set off for a small backwater planet he suspected to be a tomb-world. One night, we younger acolytes found some booze, and I suggested making a mock necron soldier out of scrap-metal. I borrowed green lamps from our engineer's case when he went out to take a leak.'

'Boy, there are more decent ways to tell stories to ladies, especially to those who happen to be your Inquisition tutors,' Uncle grunted from his seat.

Panaque giggled. 'I'm sorry, everyone. So, it came out almost as real. When the boss went out of his quarters to check the rooms of his retinue, half of the local guard regiment ran to the base to the sounds of gunfire. I got my wage cut in half for a few months but the laugh was worth it.'

Statues gave way to lava columns that set off a deep wall niche where faint green lights were glowing behind a row of carved boulders that separated it from the main hall. The gaps too narrow to let the owl in, Panaque turned on the manual control and landed at the closest column. Aphedron leading the party, Imudon bringing the rear with his bolter drawn, we squeezed between the boulders into the grotto.

The side-chamber, small if compared to the hall, could still admit a thousand men. A squad of lychguards were taking aim at the entrance from the dimly lit back part where Fluffster was talking with the two xenos lords. The Phaerakh was listening quietly leaning on her scythe while the cryptek shook his head with disapproval after Fluffster's every phrase.

The guards lowered their guns in synchrony. I greeted the necrons with a polite bow of my head.

'Glad to see you again, Your Grace, Lord Savant.'

Majestic in every unhurried movement, they turned to me. Under the unblinking gaze of their eyes even jolly Panaque looked embarrassed. The Phaerakh raised her hand slowly and beckoned.

'Come here, the Terran sage's apprentice.'

'We have encountered a lord who had the appearance of a cryptek,' I said in my official tone. 'He was moving on spider legs. For reasons unknown, he was going to abduct the squad of Blood Angels led by my friend.'

'The sage has already got the answer,' said the cryptek. 'Illuminor Szeras recognizes no authority after the War ended. He had arrived here before we did for the sake of his research.'

'A cryptek lord famous for his pride,' said the Phaerakh. 'Only the wealthiest can afford his service.'

The sultry hall had become chilly in a second. I took a deep breath. 'He met with the Pirate King. Maybe, even here. Now he wants to experiment on Angel who faced the same horror as the pirate. All in the place that looks too much like the Casbah. Like Iarmailt.'

'This place is creepy but it was made by a race of feral xenos, not daemons,' said Fluffster. 'Just a pale likeness that can be called quite harmless if compared to the real nightmare worlds.'

'Weird to live in a volcano,' I said looking at the lava flows on the walls and floor.

'It was a temple, and they perished soon after they'd completed it.'

'Please take no offense, lords,' I stared back at the xenos. 'What has brought you here? There are safer planets for negotiations.'

The cryptek gripped his staff but the Phaerakh nodded. 'The Flayer virus is a plague of our race, human. Lord Savant searched for clues in the great library of his ancestors, met with a few of his peers. The Silent King himself gave us a hint.'

'If Szeras has not taken every piece worth research,' said the cryptek. 'I asked him about the pirate but he claimed that he had let him away. A specimen who had lived over his use for science.'

'That's necessary to know.' Fluffster stepped closer. ' But Sergeant Pterophyllo fit quite well.'

'Human apprentice.' The cryptek touched my shoulder with his staff. 'The robber is dead. Do you know anything about the last piece of the map?'

I could only hope that they were bad at telling truth from lies but chose words with extreme caution. 'We need to get back to the Stumblebum to find this out. The Panther was as likely to take it from late DM.'

The cryptek kept his glowing eyes glued on me while I was speaking. He pondered for a few moments, then lowered his staff. 'You should remember that stealing royal property means death.'

The Phaerakh reached out to touch his pauldron. 'My stern Lord Savant, if the King trusts this circle of human sages, while should we doubt their honesty?'

'Your Radiance is gracious towards younger races,' he said back. 'They should keep in mind the Flayed Ones pose danger to them, not us.'

'Is Szeras still down there?' asked the Phaerakh.

I plucked up my courage for a decisive question. 'He retreated in terror with a puzzling phrase. Maybe Your Grace or Lord Savant happen to know what entity's name means 'gaoler' in High Gothic.'

The Phaerakh shrugged her shoulders, the cryptek's eyes got dim while he was browsing through his memory modules. Finally, he spoke in a low voice. 'Nothing even close. If there is an entity able to sow fear in Szeras, he will be silent about it.'

Fluffster bowed his head. 'My lords, I will share the news with my peers. May your voyage be safe and your search fruitful.'

'Fare ye well, human envoys.' The Phaerakh raised her hand again, her cryptek just nodded.

Panaque found strength to get over his astonishment. 'Was nice to meet you, ma'am, sir.'

Already in the owl, he whispered to me, 'So our drunken creation looked realistic indeed.'

Uncle and Sister already knew the Necrons, and our following ventures and didn't look even intimidated.

I winked at them. 'Wow, I haven't heard a single word about consorting with impure xenos.'

'We're serving the Throne without doubt while no harm comes to mankind,' said Sister.

Uncle sighed. 'Lassie, nothing can surprise me after the countryside vacation. Let others rack their brains. I'm a soldier. My job is to pull the trigger.'

Fluffster put his paw on my back. 'Volentia, do you recall what exactly Szeras shouted in the gorge?'

The phrase still rang in my ears. 'May a hundred, a thousand curses fall upon you and your minions, ever-hated gaoler.' Holding to my burning midriff, I wheezed out the last words with effort.

'Curious. No further questions.'

I felt he knew more than he wished to give out but decided not to vex him. There'd be a chance to contact Lord Kryptopterus or Panaque's buddies from Ordo Xenos. The Farseer didn't seem talkative but her race's hatred towards the Necrons would make her find out more about the smartest cryptek lord's weakness.

Despite my hopes, I only saw the Aeldari guests again when the Raptor Imperialis entered the Webway and stopped beyond the borders of the Imperial space. Fluffster had arrived to our quarters from his watch post on the bridge once the ship docked to the craftworld. Uncle and Sister had also donned their field garbs but Fluffster's decision was adamant.

'I cannot allow this degree of risk. Every mistake can result in bloodshed, and we won't be the winning side. Your sense of humour counts as well, Panaque.'

'My first mentor often called them 'knife-eared fags,' Panaque started with a playful smile, 'but I swear to never use this on Ulthwe.'

Fluffster shook his fist at him. Angel put on his helmet in silence and stood next to me. He had returned from the gorge unusually reserved and taciturn and spent most of his free time training with Imudon and Aphedron in the ship gym. I missed his older warmth but felt even proud when the two older marines' condescension was slowly giving way to respect.

Silvery glow filled the bridge. Iridescent Webway walls were glimmering in the oculus, their soft colours changing every second. In the upper part of the oculus I saw the very edge of the craftworld, a giant moon of spectral white wraithbone.

The Farseer had climbed the ladders to the highest platform and was now standing motionless, her gaze locked on her home. The Exarch sat down on the steps gripping his launcher but got up and headed to the opposite wall when he saw Aphedron go down a bridge gallery.

Imudon was watching the ship psykers fuss around the ship's warp gate. He nodded when I came closer and leaned against a column.

'I bet you're already familiar with craftworlds,' I said with a cheerful smile.

'Not in the way their dwellers would approve,' he answered reluctantly. 'Well, concerning our previous talk. I get why you tried to laugh it off. Stay around and don't make more mess.'

Waves of shimmering light ran over the polished surface of the warp gate. With an outburst of energy it opened to reveal a glowing corridor similar to the Webway. The guests showing us the way, we entered the alien place, and the combined psychic radiance of its souls overwhelmed my psyker-sight. Iarmailt had been dead for millennia while Ulthwe was one living organism animated by the preserved spirits of its ancients who were singing in unison within its Infinity Circuit.

A tall gate with flowy patterns of unseen hues opened smoothly to let us in. I stepped under the vaults of turquoise and pale gold, speechless at the beauty of the vast hall. Crystal trees tinkled softly in the aether breeze from a dozen other ornate gates, and their colourful flowers cast subtle light on the walls with murals of alien cities and battles fought by Aeldari in times of old. That's what the palace on the world of lupines should have looked like in its better days.

'This is a rare honour to be welcomed in these halls, humans,' said the Farseer. 'Before the rest of you will be allowed to enter, Lord Crinitus has to follow us right to Lord Ulthran's pavilion. The guards will let you in when time comes.'

When one of the gates closed behind their backs noiselessly, I walked around the hall listening to the song of the Circuit. On the high vault over the trees there was a painting made with the most stunning mastery. A wistful Aeldari lady spread her arms as if to embrace those who came in, and a crystal tear sparkled on her cheek. Her face, though that of a xenos, strangely reminded me of my foster mother, of Mother Superioress from the small convent by the sea. Maybe even my birth mother whom I couldn't recall, had looked at me like that before death took her away.

'Open the door. Let me in,' a quiet voice rustled in my mind. Drawn by the call I couldn't resist, I walked up to the next gate and touched the smooth surface. 'Order it to open. One word, and your crew is doomed.' I looked back trying to find Imudon between the trees. 'You have a second to make up your mind, Inquisitor.'

I breathed in to concentrate on the lock and sent a single word to its psychic mechanism. 'Open.'

A sleek shape of a Farseer clad in black and bone-white of Ulthwe slipped through the doorway. Crimson embers of the stranger's eyes lit up in the slits of the tall helmet, and my breath stopped.


	22. Episode 3 Chapter 5

Bound by malign sorcery, I could only watch my enemy move past gates and murals. A shadow himself, he cast no shadow as he passed by glowing trees but even their shimmering lost its colour as if dulled by his presence. Only my lips moved without a slightest sound when I tried to call out. The mock Farseer stopped and put his finger to his mouthpiece. I took a breath struggling with my spasming throat and gathered all remaining strength for a single sound. A faint whine that died in the same moment.

It was a miracle of the Emperor's mercy that Imudon still heard it. He crossed the hall with a few giant leaps and blocked the changeling's way right before he could touch the gate. Grey and black flashed by in a lightning-swift combat. Imudon made his enemy step back, and the wraithbone helmet fell down with a tinkle and rolled towards me, nearly split in half with a blow of Imudon's bolter butt. The changeling froze up, the Dark Apostle's features revealed under the helmet dissolved into a blob of darkness with glowing red eyes.

'Your power over me ended long ago.' Imudon grabbed the changeling by the neck and hurled him at the wall.

A cloud of sulphurous smoke rose where the changeling had been, its black wisps floated up to the vault but melted before they could reach the weeping lady's visage. Shivering, I gripped Imudon's arm with both hands and finally caught my breath. The stench of sulphur was still lingering in the hall but the crushing psychic presence vanished.

'My mark was removed by the Emperor's touch. But for that, none of your companions could have seen this abomination,' said Imudon. 'They're gaping at the alien wonders and will recall nothing if you ask them.'

'If the Aeldari didn't notice it too, just don't tell Fluffster or, worse, Lord Mentor. Don't feel like collecting empty bottles for food again. If I exhaust their patience, they'll drop me off in the middle of the warp.' My cheeks felt hot. I barely let his vambrace go, my fingers still stiff. 'We talked about the fate of their tethered goats among the lupines on the day I lost my hope. But you'd better stick to them than become this monster's puppet. Again and again you promise to refuse his demands but still give in. You hid the bargain from me when we met in the shrine.'

'He looked way more harmless and friendly than you then,' I admitted through gritted teeth.

'It bought my trust a hundred centuries ago when my warhost was fleeing Horus' defeat to Sicarus. Dark priests choose their First Acolytes with a constant fear that one day the apprentice kills the master. Their fears are always justified. A boyish, servile legionnaire astonished me later when he performed tricks too hard for even ordained Dark Apostles. I chose him because he agreed to keep my secrets. No daemons were a match for the shadows he summoned. He has lived through direct bomb hits, through ship crashes. When a rival Chaos Lord dumped him into the warp, he emerged a second later, with the same disgusting simmer.'

I looked down at my boots. He stepped aside and went on, 'I tried to get rid of him when I realised the menace. He would have got rid of me instead, if the Emperor was deaf to my last words. The Emperor is stronger than the abomination in a legionnaire body but you keep on answering its voice instead of calling out to Him.'

Shame on me for this weakness. Months ago I had sworn to send the Dark Apostle to the dogs but couldn't recall a single word of prayer in danger. Rubbing my burning eyes, I didn't dare to look up at Imudon.

Panaque came just in time to let me end this awkward talk. Before he could notice anything, I straightened up and forced myself to smile. He strolled past the trees, content as if on a vacation.

'This hall is fancy but I already wanna to see more. You're also bored by waiting, ma'am.'

If he noticed drying tears in my eyes, he was polite enough to avoid comments. 'The mural to the left was in our xenology manual. I drew whiskers and horns on the Farseers' helmets during a particularly tedious lecture.'

I pointed up. 'The one on the vault is far more impressive.'

'Mother Isha, the Eldar call her. My mentor said, she's held captive in the Plague realm, always whispering the cures for Nurgle's plague to all mortals. Unlike all things Eldar, a fine lack of discrimination.'

'I saw a tiny shard of her relative in the War-Shrine of Iarmailt. Fluffster knew how to talk to the Avatar. Just a piece of a mighty Old One, he said calmly when I and Aphedron were about to poop our pants.'

'Speak for yourself, sweetie.' Aphedron burst out laughing from the crystal garden.

'It was the first and only time you admitted there's someone more magnificent than you.'

'In my class, I'm still peerless.'

A soft warp breeze blew in, and a noiseless shadow in midnight blue slipped from behind a column in the far end of the hall. I recoiled trying to pick the most suitable litany but a familiar cold aura touched my soul, and Exarch Eitleog gave out a croaking chuckle under his skull helmet.

Aphedron crossed his arms. 'Nostalgia for the War-Shrine adventure wouldn't be full without you, wannabe Chaplain.'

Eitleog walked past the garden. 'You've chosen a wrong minute for clowning.'

'So edgy even Commorrites are envious. My preacher buddy would approve.'

Imudon had already retreated to stay out of the friendly reunion. Only when Eitleog activated the portal next to Panaque's favourite mural, Imudon made a few steps forward, bringing the rear far enough to demonstrate his total lack of interest. Angel, uptight and sour, marched on trying not to look at the xenos. Runes were lighting up one by one on the wraithbone door, the tinkling tune of crystal leaves got loud and disturbing. A powerful gust swung the gate open. At Eitleog's sign a silvery ray traced the path into an enormous chamber that lay behind.

Spheres of cool whitish fire were floating under the sky-like vaults like a garland of suns. Tiny sparks of psychic energy flickered by but my weak sight couldn't catch even a glimpse of their essence. Wraithbone of many colours grew in flowy, rounded shapes that intertwined and merged. For miles around, armadas of sleek voidships were resting on gigantic platforms or moving in and out of warp gates large enough to let in a Gloriana warship. Eitleog led us between rows of Corsair Phoenix flyers and cargo transports to a black dropship with a golden rune of Ulthwe painted on its side. Taciturn Guardians in bone-white helmets opened the door and stood at attention on both sides watching us come in.

Panaque pulled a face to them. 'After you've been the arresting side, feels weird to switch roles.'

'Boy, there're Harlequin masques who recruit humans, if you always feel like laughing.' Aphedron stopped in the doorway to take one more look at the spacious docks. 'Ask the numbskull what it really means to be arrested by knife-eared fags.'

'Space marines literally know no fear. I've been struggling with myself not to try saying these words in my mentor's voice. You've done that even cooler.'

The dropship took off so smoothly even a seer crystal floating under the ceiling didn't move. Beyond the borders of the docking area a city stretched to the misty horizon, separated from the docks by a wide ring of crystal forest. Where an arched bridge was rocking over a sparkling canal, transparent roots of trees weaved over the slopes, towers and domes of vast living quarters were sprouting right over rock terraces, rising to the artificial skies. Everything had its own subtle voice in the choir, the tune only getting more melodic and powerful as we were driving closer to the heart of the craftworld.

'Like a mighty tree grown out of a single seed,' I said quietly, entranced by the choral.

'You left Iarmailt too early,' Eitleog answered all of a sudden. 'Otherwise you could have seen a whole tree return to the seed.'

'You made me fall asleep so that I missed all the curious things,' Aphedron grumbled.

'This is a rite of great mystery only the chieftains of Altansar dare to use. Not for the filthy eyes of those worshipping She-Who-Thirsts.'

'My first mentor was once pissed off by a band of Altansar raiders who had stolen a precious relic he thought to belong to a Necron ship,' Panaque interfered.

I grabbed him by the sleeve. 'Hey, listen. Before the Palace, this noble Reaper took a null shard from me to finish the Beast. A weapon given by the Phaerakh.'

To my surprise, Eitleog didn't try to silence me. He shrugged his shoulders. 'There are many secrets too arcane for mon-keigh brains.'

'When I asked Fluffster, he compared it to blackstone. I bet you've used the anti-psychic kind as well.'

'Some of your race aren't as stupid as their peers.' He walked away to the other end of the salon to finish the talk.

Levels above levels of airy galleries and pavilions built of crystal slid glimmering past the windows as the dropship was traveling up to the sky-vault. It left the glowing haze behind, and the cities underneath vanished from sight. Only a few shining spires towered above the sea of mist and clouds like palaces of noblemen on Imperial hive worlds. The tallest of them, a colossal gemstone with many dazzling facets, radiated brighter than the local suns in the psyker-sight.

A hatch opened in one of the rune-strewn facets to let us in. The dropship landed on a narrow platform between Nightwing flyers of the same colour. I jumped out on the polished floor panels. Thin psychic frost crunched under my boots. The wind smelled of ozone, so cold I held my breath for a few seconds when it blew into my face. Spiral ladders with phosphorous runes all over the frail steps led to the higher levels where the Farseer was waiting before a closed gate with a defender squad of Black Guardians in heavy armour.

She wore no helmet now, and her red hair was so sprinkled with frost it looked grey of old age. Her eyes glowed with witch-light on her frozen pallid face as she was staring into the Immaterium.

From the inside, the place differed little from the ancient outpost on Lathyrus. Troubled aether tides on the very edge of the Eye reached the craftworld shell as it orbited the rift, unable to break free from its pull.

She looked down at us, not bothering to show a slightest degree of hospitality. 'Quicker. You will have to depart before Ulthwe leaves the ruined Webway passage for the tainted space.'

Chambers of the Farseer Council were unexpectedly modest and pristine, their only decoration being latticework patterns of thin lines weaving around runic inlays of multicolour crystal and blackstone. Guardians stood motionless on both sides of every empty seer throne. Here and there barrels of d-cannons stuck out from rows of columns in passages leading to other warp gateways.

The longest stairway ended in a brightly lit pavilion with transparent walls. In the center, on a platform suspended under the very vault, crystal seats formed a circle around a crystal sphere floating in the air. Two of them were already occupied. One of the whispering conspirators was a Farseer in ornate armour, the second none other than Fluffster.

'That's the surprise I promised you, Lord Ulthran,' Fluffster said when we climbed up.

Eldrad Ulthran's fleeting gaze slipped over us. Neither his face not his aura betrayed his mood or his intentions. Known as one of the strongest psykers in the whole galaxy, he was feared and hated even by many Inquisitors of our Ordo as he tended to use greedy cultist leaders for his long cons. Weariness gave out his ancient age even though his kind barely changed at all through the millennia of their lives.

'The mark is foul to encounter even when warned,' he said in a tone as blank as his expression. His flawless High Gothic seemed to belong to old school texts we had had to learn by heart.

'You can compare it with an opposite case.' Fluffster turned to Imudon and beckoned.

'I wouldn't have believed you if you didn't bring him along.' The Farseer narrowed his eyes, and I felt his psyker-sight concentrate on Imudon's mind. 'Removed without a trace. The curse of the Great Enemy lifted from Pansexualis as well. That's what obscured the pattern of his threads when I last saw him.'

Imudon crossed his arms in silence. Even Aphedron didn't dare to speak out. We were but a curious display of exhibits to boast before a xenos buddy.

'So you'll resume your preaching about the Rhana Dandra with new enthusiasm,' Fluffster answered.

Eldrad Ulthran raised his hand, and a silvery rune lit inside the sphere, so incandescent even the sunlight from the outside went dimmer. The one absent from our manuals. Panaque scratched his head and made a step forward to take a closer peek.

'The Seventh Path even the enlightened leaders of my race see as a false hope of utter insanity.'

Panaque said a few words in the Aeldari tongue. The corners of Eldrad's lips moved as if he tried to pull a smile, and he answered with a lengthy sentence that ended with a question. Panaque lingered for a moment, than blurted out another phrase with a grin of relief.

'Let our guests take their places,' Eldrad Ulthran said in High Gothic again.

Fluffster waved his paw at me and pointed at the seat next to him.

'I was afraid he asked something that wasn't in those damn translation exercises,' Panaque whispered to me on the way. 'But finally I've made use of two phrases out of ten I hadn't forgotten yet.'

'Feorag, have you noticed that?' Eldrad Ulthran touched the Farseer's shoulder when she took her seat by his side. 'Their threads twisted together, overcast by the coming shadow but leading further. The shadow that has embraced the Pirate King. The two unexpected pieces on the board changed his course after Iarmailt, and his future got hazy. All I can say, in all the futures his barge is destroyed, his power lost.'

Angel spoke out against all expectations. 'The shadow is everywhere within our reach. The great swarm's call is singing in the blood of my brethren.'

'You're not the one to give in to the swarm's lure soon,' said Eldrad Ulthran. 'Unlike the last part of the Old Empire. The White Hawk stood before a hard choice while choosing a decent fate for the Dark City.'

Fluffster chuckled. 'That's how he returned their hospitality.'

'One thing is true, Lord Crinitus. The old has to die so that our people could be reborn. Not to die to the last one, as many try to scare us, but to part with the past that begot She-Who-Thirsts. Signs come up one by one. A runagate sorcerer tried to rob the Black Library where the great tome of the Laughing God's wisdom had opened by itself.'

'Pardon the boy. He's yet to mature.'

'He's just a tool in the bigger game, even when trying to combat the forces that doomed his legion brothers. So will be the Deathwatch fighters who land on Coheria while the real deeds are being done far beyond.'

'You've told me the Hawk is on the road to claim the first Cronesword.'

'One of those made from the Crone's fingers!' Panaque found another opportunity to flaunt his knowledge.

'All five shall come together in a great battle,' said Eldrad Ulthran.

'Lady Inquisitor has witnessed the Despoiler's envoy announce his arrival,' said Fluffster. 'The last battle coming for us as well.'

I smiled when Eldrad Ulthran's cold stare turned to me. 'Had to pose as cupbearer to merge in with the once illustrious beau-monde of the Macan Kumbang. The Despoiler needs your Infinite Circuit to reanimate the filthy daemon ship.'

'I've already heard that from Lord Crinitus, Inquisitor.'

'The dark priest who gave me the mark will lead the attack.' A stray thought about revealing all truth about the horrid visitor popped up but I suppressed her before the Farseer could read it. 'He wants to use Prince Fiachra as a bait and me as a beacon.'

'Let him,' said Fluffster. 'Lord Mentor is to thank for a few useful things the monster won't like.'

'The gull sorcerer is to watch out at best,' I recalled the tricky double agent.

Eldrad Ulthran nodded. 'You have to. One day, he'll help you find a key to the riddles bothering you.'

A chilly breeze wafted through the hall. The bittersweet smoke rising over pearly censers behind the seats changed its colour, and a sickening note added in. Eldrad Ulthran leaned forward listening to the anxious motifs that disrupted the majestic tune of the psychic choir.

'Something has mixed the threads. A knot in near past but hard to locate. Ulthwe should have stayed within the safety of the Webway for a few more hours.'

'The Despoiler is able to summon an Avatar of the Great Enemy after he struck a deal with the Serpent Son,' said Feorag while Eitleog grabbed his launcher pointing at the haze thickening beneath.

The Guardians had vanished from sight, the bottom of the ladder consumed by the haze grown into dense fog. In the psyker-sight, the cloudless skies around the pavilion had turned into a mess of unnatural hues. Frost was spreading over the floor and the vault, only the circle of silvery light cast by the strange rune left clear.

'They're targeting the Hall of Seers,' Eldrad said calmly. He snapped his fingers, and a splendid force staff appeared out of nowhere by the armrest of his seat. 'My guests, hold your breath for a few moments. There's the last rite to be done before the battle begins.'

Psychic lightnings cracked over the same rune carved on the headpiece. A whirlpool of energy running from all directions turned into a crushing storm. At another snap of his fingers the whole world exploded in a flash of dazzling white.


	23. Episode 3 Chapter 6

Black circles and silvery sparks were dancing before my eyes, every heartbeat resonating with pulsing pain in my head. As the psychic disruption was settling, I sat up and rubbed my temples. It was a chamber of grey wraitbone, empty and featureless save a round warp-gate in the middle of the opposite door. There were no lamps or sparkling crystals but the walls themselves emitted a subtle glow that let me see the outlines. Clouds of purplish mist were floating all around, filling the place with a sugary, sticky smell of decomposing perfume. Panaque lay face down on the floor, Angel was standing behind me, his power claw activated, his bolter aimed at the gate. When I touched the Interrogator's back, he only shivered.

'Angel, where are the others?' I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. 'The vox is dead. A vile sorcery has scattered us over the craftworld like…' He didn't finish the phrase, a painful flashback of the Vengeful Spirit setting his aura on fire.

The clouds shifted, and a movement under the door caught my eye. A dark messy pile on the shaded bottom stair stirred and gave out a wheeze. An Aeldari soulfire about to die out under the daemonic gales that had breached the defences of Ulthwe. Angel lowered his bolter to take aim at the xeno's head but I waved my hand.

'A second. Check Panaque's heart with your armour scanner.'

On tiptoes, my laspistol in hand, I leaned over the unconscious xeno and pulled aside the ragged edge of their cloak that covered the xeno's face. Blackened traces of bloody tears crossed the pasty cheeks of the Corsair Prince, a grimace of torment distorted his peaked features. Fiachra's eyes opened with effort at my psychic touch. He raised his hand pointing at his chest.

In the middle of his breastplate, where a spirit stone should have been, I saw an obsidian-black sphere with crimson fiery veins twisting on the surface. Chill pierced my midriff when I reached out to touch it.

'The… dark priest has replaced it,' I guessed out loud.

Fiachra only closed his eyes. His lips moved, but before he could say a word, his body went limp again.

'He's doomed,' said Angel. 'Let's go lest the power that has seized his body finishes us.'

'We've gotta bring him back to his senses,' I argued. 'He's the only one who knows the way out of here.'

'You're a psyker.'

'Without a soul binding. This place smells of daemons. Remember the breaching of the Stumblebum? Those damn daemonettes smelled exactly the same.'

'The Farseer has betrayed us anyway if he just dumped us to this tainted place.' Angel turned his back to the Corsair and pointed at the distant exit of the chamber already veiled with haze.

'Let me try, Angel. Give me just one stim pack.'

While I was unpacking the stimulators, Panaque knelt beside Fiachra and started poking at the black stone with his penknife. The crimson veins flashed, and the marble rolled out of its setting under my feet. I stepped over it with a cuss and leaned over to give Fiachra a shot. Silence fell over the chamber for a few seconds, then we heard his raspy breath. He sat up slowly, tried to get up but flopped back. All of a sudden terror distorted his face when he looked up at me.

'Abomination,' he hissed in awkward High Gothic.

Angel was already standing behind my back, holding Fiachra at gunpoint. 'I dare you, filthy xeno.'

Fiachra's teeth clinked as he shivered. 'Abo-omii-naaa-tion,' he howled staring at me. A wave of warp-cold swept through the chamber, and my heart skipped a beat. Air left my lungs, I staggered choking as if crushed under collapsing walls. The old horror of the day that had ended my childhood in the convent.

'Take it away, ma'am!' Panaque shouted pointing at my breastplate. Right over the place of the mark the daemonic stone was pulsing and flickering, fused with the carapace by the same menacing power that had left the mark. I grabbed Panaque's knife but this time it slipped off the stone without a scratch on its surface.

'So you'll have to get rid of the carapace,' said Angel. 'We'll cover you on the way.'

'And it will stick to my flesh then.' I frowned.

'I'll try and cut it out with my blessed blades.'

I sighed. 'Something that fits Imudon, not you. We have other rules of team ethics in our old guard.'

'You promised to dump me through the hatch for a few times.'

'But I refused to send you to the Death Company when you nearly got lost in the Black Rage.'

Panaque stood between us. 'He's wheezing again.'

'The damn marble will wait,' I said. 'Prince, do you know the way out?'

Fiachra licked his cracked lips, catching for air. 'Docks. I'll… show…'

'Angel, pick him up. You're to take the lead. We'll find the other marines. Uncle, Sister and the sailors are locked in the dock.'

'What about Fluffster?' said Panaque.

'The fuzzy crook will find us himself when he deems it necessary.'

The treacly smell filled all the passages of this deserted part of the craftworld. We were running up and down bridges and pathways through the purplish fog so thick even lamplight got lost from sight a few steps away. After we'd broken through to a spot of cleaner air, we passed under the arched vaults of a long gallery to a lowland drowned in mist. Tops of crystal trees stuck out of the swirling waves of haze like masts of a sinking boat.

Fiachra stirred and gave out a hiss. 'She-Who-Thirsts.' The chill of his panic startled me. Even the ominous marble couldn't have scared him worse. The Dark Apostle had left him as a bait to get ravaged and devoured, without a spirit stone for his soul to take refuge.

'As if we need a daemonhost in our crew,' I said, feverishly trying to pick a safer way to get past the traps. Drawing holy symbols on armour pieces would be natural with Imperial citizens but with xenos, most Inquisitors without archeotech treasuries in their possession would put the doomed Eldar to rest with a bolt to his head.

When I whispered my doubts to Panaque, he scratched his chin. 'My first mentor would have chained him in blessed fetters with sigils on all locks. Well, I'm not sure our knife-eared friend would appreciate this turn. I bet he's listening to your thoughts.'

I shook my head at his giggle. 'Curiosity killed the cat. It's on the brink of heresy, but let's stop to work on a new Imperium-inspired design of his armour. Before the Dark Apostle suggests drawing his blasphemous signs.'

Fiachra's eyes rolled up. 'Ynnead.' A single word left his lips, and pink froth trickled down his cheek from the corner of his mouth. Angel lay him down on the threshold, touched a reserve stim pack fixed on his belt but didn't take it off.

'Volentia, he's dying. The daemons sense his presence. They'll rush here to feast on his soul.'

'That unknown rune in Ulthran's pavilion, it belongs to Ynnead,' said Panaque. ' The Aeldari believe this deity is able to rip the Dark Prince's belly open.'

'Wanna check whether this is true?' I stopped pondering, then nodded. 'If Ynnead is another Old One, his power can give the daemons a royal pain in the ass.'

'I remember the symbol. Wait a second.' He broke a wraithbone piece off the closest column and scratched the wall with its sharp edge. A thin white line remained on the surface. Panaque leaned over Fiachra who was already wheezing in death agony, and the shard scraped across the breastplate.

'From carving Imperial Eagles on warehouse walls to copying xenos symbols.' I walked around, watching the glimmering silvery strokes on the dark teal plating.

Panaque blinked. 'Just as you said that, ma'am, it was like… I took a glimpse of myself scribbling the Aquila behind those shelves. For a moment, I saw the Eagle instead of this weird rune.'

'Didn't think you still miss the rebel days.'

'Rebels or not...' He started but waved his hand and got back to his job. 'Let past be past.'

The rune was shining in the psyker-sight, and even the haze creeping into the passage thinned out and ceded. Fiachra breathed in and opened his eyes.

'Ynnead,' he repeated the name as if calling out to the god yet unknown to most of his race. 'He has silenced their abominable voices.'

'Let's hurry on.' I ran after Angel into the darkened forest. Thick, hot murk had descended on the place. It had swallowed the artificial suns, subdued the light of crystal trees, and only the purplish glow of the mist let us see the outlines of trunks and boughs weaved into a giant living palace. High above, in the canopy of branches, scared birds wailed at every gust of wind that shook their nests.

Deep in the thicket, a shrill tune mixed in with the bird voices. It lacked harmony but its rapturous rhythm made the whole forest sway to the beat. Louder with every turn of the road, it rang in my ears, and a pit opened in my stomach.

Fiachra stirred hanging from Angel's shoulder. 'Herald of the Great Enemy… the yours call this abomination...'

'A Herald comes at the head of a whole horde of daemonettes,' said Angel. 'They'll tag along with us now.'

'Are there other roads to the docks?' I asked the Corsair.

'Straight through the tree walls. We'll get tangled up in vines and branches to the enemy's delight.'

'Angel, your jump pack,' I said. 'Check up what's out there.'

Fiachra frowned. 'Inquisitor, you'll waste your fuel. The fog has spread over the docks. It's risen to the sky-vault. I hear the choir of the Farseer Council. They're making every effort to keep it from overwhelming the living quarters and the seer pavilions.' A violent cough shook him, and pale blood gushed out of his mouth.

My guts spasmed at a new wave of treacly stench. The Herald's unholy tune was squealing and clamouring from all sides as if the forest was haunted by thousands of crazed flutists and drummers. Without a leaf touched or a branch bent, three sleek shapes leapt out of the woods before us, dancing, twisting their clawed limbs under unnatural angles. Repulsive in their elegance, the daemonettes reached out, their psychic voices singing of pain and rapture.

Angel let Fiachra slip into our outstretched arms and darted forward. His battle litany echoed between the trees, subduing even the music for a second. Power blades clashed against the daemonettes' pincers. A close match for the Neverborn with his strength and agility, Angel hacked and parried so quickly a single glimpse of the fight made me dizzy.

We took cover beside panting Fiachra, ready to meet any new enemies with fire. The vox channels remained silent, only distant hisses and walls broke through the statics.

With a roar of victory, Angel threw the last daemonette's head to the ground and stepped over the evaporating remains. Pink ichor was streaming down his armour, leaving burnt traces on the red ceramite.

My heart throbbed, blood rushed to my head. A psychic wave, stronger than before, was rolling over the road. In the dark, visible to the warp-sight only, dozens of daemons were pulling to the light of living souls. I shouted the Litany of Protection, and my friends repeated the holy words on the run.

'The xeno's blacked out!' Panaque cried between prayers.

'Just don't stop!' I ordered back.

The only road meandered between the ancient trees with no end or light in sight. Without haste or fatigue, the daemonettes stalked us waiting until we tired ourselves out. More of them joined the chase, and the background noise had grown into a loony cacophony. The rhythm echoed with pain in my temples, my lungs got short of air. I tripped on a tree root and slammed into a crystal trunk. A branch knocked off my hat, sharpened leaves left burning cuts on my forehead but I limped on wiping blood that dripped down into my eyes.

'It will get worse,' the Dark Apostle whispered inside my head when I stopped praying to recuperate. 'The Enthralling Herald will rally its retinue to corner you before you reach the forest edge. They're anticipating the pleasure of suffering they'll inflict on you.'

'Bugger off,' I sent back. 'I've already screwed up listening to your marvelous propositions.'

Soon we pathetic mortals slowed down, no longer able to keep up with Angel's pace. Holding to my heart with both hands, I closed my eyes. As the adrenaline of the chase was wearing out, pain pierced my ankle when I made a step forward. The daemonettes got closer. Purple eyes lit up far in the tangle of bushes and boughs. A half-circle of predators about to hurl themselves at their prey.

Another quiet voice reached my mind. One of the Aeldari. 'Inquisitor, you should have waited at the gates. We cannot abandon you and your crew to die. Follow the way I'll show you.' Farseer Feorag's cold hubris was gone. 'Prince Fiachra owes his life to your bravery.'

'Ulthran's Farseer has found us,' I told my friends. 'Thanks to Fluffster, I guess. What a sudden bout of kindness. She promises to lead us to safety.'

'Everyone pretends to care about us now,' Angel said. 'Aren't you surprised that she's popped up right when the daemons overtook us? Sure, she's gonna lure us to a portal to dump out of the craftworld along with the daemonettes.'

I concentrated on the silvery light of Feorag's soul shining in the distance. 'Farseer, the Aeldari never do anything for free. What guarantees do we have that we live through your plan?'

'The word of Lord Eldrad Ulthran should be enough for younger races,' her overly friendly tone changed back to the natural bitchiness. 'If you bring the daemons to the docks, the guards will terminate you before you reach even the outskirts.'

'Our forces are too small to combat them on our own!'

'Your marines are with me. I hope you care about their safety.'

'So, to put it short, first they kill Aphedron and Imudon, then us,' I grunted. 'They don't want us anywhere near their docks while the daemonettes are after us.'

'Filthy xenos,' said Angel. 'Fire is the only way to bargain with them.'

'When you have a gun to fire. Now, all we can do is to blow up a bunch of these horny freaks.'

'Horny in all senses.' Panaque found strength to gave out a laugh. 'Well, craftworlds always have watchtowers with d-cannons around wild areas. Let's persuade our new buddy to fire a few fine salvos.'

'We'll have to leave the road anyway to stay away from the main docks.'

'The daemons will cut us off from the outposts,' Angel argued.

'But if we turn now, Feorag will think we've agreed to follow her plan. She might release the two goons to help us. It's against her interests to have us killed before we reach the exit.'

'What if she's listening to you?'

I closed my eyes to find the distant flickering of her soul. She reacted immediately. 'Wise, Inquisitor. Don't lose sight of the beacon.'

'We won't make it to your place without Imudon and Aphedron, Farseer. There's a Herald of the Dark Prince leading the daemonettes.'

'I'll distract them for a while.'

Without further discussions I slipped under an arch of intertwined boughs into the stifling depths of the wood. Twigs lashed at my face and shoulders, twisting roots caught my feet. Bloodstained shreds of my coat remained in the bushes when I crawled through a wall of thorns. Angel forced his way through the thicket with a beast's ferocity, broken branches flying off with every swing off his claws. The soul-light was growing brighter, the daemonettes' stuffy auras faded, left far behind.

On a small clearing I stopped for a brief respite. To be honest, to take a peek of the vicinity before the daemons overtake us again. It was more than risky to use psyker abilities within Feorag's reach but Fiachra didn't react to questions and psychic prods. Even another stim pack failed to wake him up.

'What if he stays like that?' said Angel scanning the Corsair's brain.

'We'll try connecting him to the machinery. I saw my late mentor doing that with psykers,' Panaque hurried to boast his experience.

'This one is a xeno. Xenotech is even trickier.'

To the right the forest was sparser. Quite close to the initial path, so Feorag won't worry too much while she's busy scaring off the daemonettes.

'Ma'am, farseers are able to look into the future,' Panaque spoke out loud about the fishiest side of the plan.

'Let her act then,' I said. 'And we'll do what depends on us.'

Fresh wind blew from the open woodlands in a few minutes, and I darted forward with doubled enthusiasm. The soulfire vanished but I decided to think about the Farseer only after we reached the edge. Whether to give a damn at all, I'd say but for the hostages. Fluffster, with his Terran connections, will surely get out of trouble yet the two have no friends left to rescue them. Most will be quite relieved to get rid of them.

Dim light oozed through the haze. Trees gave way to blooming bushes about my height. Right ahead, in the middle of a vast meadow, a slender watchtower stuck out of the fog lingering over the ground, its bone-white walls glowing in the unnatural dark. Bluish psychic lightnings and bolter blasts flashed at its bottom every second but the dense fog hid the fighters from sight.

Even a slight glimpse with my psyker-sight felt like a crushing blow to the head. More than a dozen frenzied daemonettes had cornered a few Aeldari and two humans, not letting them get closer to the tower. Feorag who'd set a trap for us got trapped herself.

'You'll fail,' the Dark Apostle whispered. Muttering litanies to subdue the obnoxious voice in my head, I grabbed my pistol. Angel dropped Fiachra to the grass and activated his power claws.

'You'd do better with the bolter,' I said.

'I want to rip their unholy shapes to pieces to banish their filthy essence to the warp where it belongs,' he growled.

'So leave us your bolter, hothead. The laspistol is good enough to give them a fashionable piercing that will heal in a minute, that's all.'

'It's heavy for unaugmented humans. You might miss and wound or kill one of us.'

'You three are robust lucky bastards. And if we blow the Farseer's head by accident, Ulthran cannot blame us.'

When Angel soared to battle, I called Panaque to set the bolter up in the tree roots. Recoil was the worst concern, strong enough to break arms when fired by ordinary men. Panaque gripped the trigger with both hands, I turned the barrel towards the roiling haze, aiming at a pack of purplish unlights between the fighting Aeldari and the tower. The shot tore the bolter out of my hands and threw me to the ground.

'One shot for every hundred from Imudon's bolter,' I said with a sigh when we picked the weapon up and mounted it back with joint efforts.

'Let's lay the Corsair over the bolter to fix it in this position,' Panaque suggested.

Fiachra's lids trembled. 'The famous pragmatism of the mon'keigh,' he wheezed.

'To get your compatriots out of this shit,' I said.

His bloody lips moved to pull a macabre smile. 'I'm an outcast, not a loyal devotee of the Council. A little less of a bait than you but still a bargaining chip.'

'So you understand why it's better to stay good buddies.'

'The Will of Ynnead has saved me from death. You're but tools of His Providence.'

He got up holding to a tree. I turned to Panaque and leaned to the barrel to aim for the next shot. Before we could adjust the bolter for the third one, the battle was over. We took the weapon from both sides and headed to the tower, letting recovering Fiachra limp behind.

Warlocks bleeding from grievous wounds gathered around Feorag before the open door of the tower. The three marines stood nearby cleaning their weapons. Aphedron was the first to see us. I couldn't resist chuckling when I saw him over a pile of smoking daemonette corpses.

'Avenging your wasted youth.'

He answered with a reserved nod and wiped ichor off his sword with a brisk angry stroke. Imudon spoke instead. 'It's our duty to send this scum back to the warp after He pardoned us.'

'That's where our purposes meet.' I nodded with a crooked smile.

Feorag walked up to us. She greeted Fiachra with a light bow of her head, then beckoned. 'Inquisitor, your machinations are so predictable.'

'We only need to get rid of the crowd of unwanted suitors and fight our way to our friends on the ship,' I said. 'Now, your retinue is too battered to make ultimatums.'

She raised her hand slowly pointing at the tower. 'Exarch Eitleog is waiting there, his finger on the trigger of his launcher. I dare you to attack us.'

'Please keep your hair on, Farseer. You have a horde of daemons dancing around but wanna smite the guests of your boss.'

'You cannot enter the docks without Lord Ulthran's permission.'

'Farseer, don't you sense the Herald's main force approach?' Aphedron asked without a shadow of his usual jovial tone. His voice sounded so grim I'd think another warrior had taken his armour.

She turned her back to us and headed to the door. On the threshold she spat out, 'Come in.'

The psychoactive lock clinked behind our backs. Narrow steps of a spiral ladder led up to the shaded upper chambers. Warlocks stayed by two on mid-level platforms with smaller cannons but Feorag only stopped before a carved door at the very top. Runes lit up all over the surface at her touch, and the heavy doorleaves opened up like a flower of sharp petals.

Eitleog had frozen up as a statue of a marksman, the barrel of his rocket launcher in a tall loophole in the front wall. Three wraithbone cannons were mounted on a dais encrusted with seer crystals. Unlike the Imperial outposts, the watchtower had no terminals or control panels, instead connected to the Infinite Circuit with a psychic link. Only psykers could fire the cannons with the use of crystal handles.

Feorag squinted at us as she took her seat by the central cannon. 'Your souls are so weak, human. Each of you has to choose a cannon and assist the Aeldari gunner. Those without the mind-gift will retreat to the door to protect us from intruders.'

'Volentia, be so kind to rid me of this sour bastard's company,' said Aphedron getting down to one knee before the d-cannon to the left. Fiachra, moving his limp legs with effort, grabbed the handle.

Under Eitleog's cold stare I touched one of the handles, and the choir of ancient souls sang in my ears. The cannon's crystal heart was beating inside the wraithbone frame, its fiery wrath ready to come down on the daemons. Without a word Eitleog clung to the cannon. His powerful aura overtook mine before I could concentrate properly, and all I could do was muttering psyker litanies so as not to slip into the warp.

The choir was chanting a fierce battle hymn, disturbing notes of daemonic unsouls only popping up for a while but drowning in the stormy Current. The combined radiance of the Seers had grown so bright it reached even us on the very edge of the battlefield. Eldrad Ulthran's voice echoed through all the craftworld that fought against the invasion as a single close-knit army. A hostile chant rang in the warp challenging him, and the psychic tunes clashed in a bolt of deafening thunder.

All of a sudden a sultry tune weaved into the choir. It grew dizzier and louder, purple sparks came flickering around the tower. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I sat back pressing my hand to my cheek as blood rushed to my face.

'Calm down, human,' Eitleog said through his teeth. 'Or you'll miss the attack.'

My eyes and my psyker-sight locked on the meadow, I held my breath. A wave rolled over the fog, and more than a hundred sleek Lesser Daemons rushed to the watchtower, twisting and convulsing in a repulsive but graceful dance. They joined the Herald's song, and their whispers and calls reached my mind through all the wards of the outpost. Far away, the Dark Apostle giggled, waiting for me to resort to his help.

First volleys from the lower levels mowed down the avant-garde of the attack but more were leaping out of the fog. The door shook behind us as claws scraped across the wraithbone. Fiachra touched the rune on his breastplate, and Aphedron squeezed the handle. Only Feorag didn't move, deep in her seer's trance.

'Calm down,' Eitleog raised his voice. 'A mature warrior waits while an unfit youngling loses in haste.'

'The daemons are already in,' Panaque shouted.

'The wards on every platform are still strong. But if you fire now, you'll miss when the Herald joins its host on the battlefield.'

Gunfire from the lowest platform died out. In less than a second, a taller daemonette rode forward on a Steed of Slaanesh, surrounded by a cadre of daemonic dancers. Gems glistened in the crown of horns over its androgynous face, its limbs bending, its back arched as it writhed on its mount's back in a pantomime of ecstasy. It put a phallic bone flute to its fanged mouth, and the whole world moved and blurred at the first trills.

Cold fingers squeezed my neck. A tide of icy chill took my breath away as if I'd fallen into freezing water. My ears still ringing, I let go of the handle.

Eitleog shook me and hissed, 'Stop gaping. It's time.'

A swirling warp rift flashed on the field, and the Herald's retinue vanished screaming. Yet the Steed darted aside, and the Herald galloped on with a victorious giggle, unharmed.

'You're the same fool as on Iarmailt,' Eitleog snapped at Aphedron as fainting Fiachra collapsed on the floor.

'A year ago, I'd be a fool to bang this abomination,' Aphedron said watching the Herald's stunts with obvious disgust.

'It will bang you with its double manhood in no time if you keep on improvising.'

The door cracked. I reached for my pistol but Eitleog showed me his clenched fist. 'Don't turn back. That's what they want from you. Keep on aiming will all precision.'

Bolter shots and battle-cries from behind drowned in a psychic cacophony when Eitleog pulled me with him, and my conscience left the material world. Feorag's soul was a dazzling blaze painful to look at, and her energy streamed into the heart of the cannon to burn the daemons in a crushing firestorm. Though comatose, Fiachra stayed connected to the cannon, and Aphedron concentrated on the energy flow to join the decisive salvo. In synchrony with Eitleog I took control of the nascent warp rift and prepared to dispatch it to the target.

At Eitleog's signal, the torrents of energy fused and exploded. The psychic recoil threw me to the floor, and I grabbed my head with both hands, the whole world veiled in white fire that burned my soul. When eyesight returned to me, I crawled back to the loopholes. Eitleog was up on his feet, pulling the trigger of his launcher, Feorag was already gone. Imudon and Angel who guarded the exit were finishing the last daemon intruder over the molten splinters of the door, pink ichor running down the stairs.

In the middle of the meadow a large circle of burnt grass remained where the Herald had been riding. The scant remains of its host were still trying to get to the tower but fell one by one under heavy fire from the tower and Feorag's lightnings cracking all over their ranks.

'Two of our Warlocks died today,' said Feorag when we went downstairs after the battle. 'But their souls will join the Circuit today.'

'It was nice to be your guest but a Corsair's home is aboard his ship,' Fiachra wheezed after another dose of simulators.

Feorag didn't seem to appreciate his sarcasm. 'The Council will present a new spirit stone to you,' she said dryly.

'My hope lies with Ynnead who saved me, not on these tricks of our Fallen Empire.'

She waited until a flyer landed on the meadow to pick us up, then retreated to the tower without a goodbye. Fiachra took a seat at the window and leaned on the wall panting.

'I'll pay the debt if we meet again, humans.'

Fluffster was the first to meet us in the docks, talking before the Raptor Imperialis with Eldrad Ulthran himself.

'We should have trapped his spirit for just a few seconds to tell him,' Fluffster said to the Farseer.

'You'll get a chance. Or one of your apprentices. It has begun.' He pointed at my carapace, and I flinched at the thought of the dark priest's unwanted gift.

'Once on board, I'll rid her of this thing. Another clue for our thinkers on Terra. Now, time to set off and put an end to the self-proclaimed kingship.'

Whatever it might mean, I headed straight to the living rooms. Finally reuniting with old friends was the most important after all alien wonders and horrors.


	24. Episode 3 - Epilogue

Epilogue

Flesh was the first they saw when the Baleful Eye went out of the warp. Reddish folds grew over the once black surface of the Macan Kumbang around throbbing gorges of former airlocks. Steam gushed out of orifices as if the battle barge was breathing. Falkus Kibre would bet he felt a stench of musk and ambergris even here on the bridge. Where swarms of corsair ships would orbit the Macan Kumbang was but void. Even the few remaining escorts had retreated to a discreet distance.

Kibre turned his head to the sound of steps on the platform. 'I say, what the heck possessed Monos Pyrd to have it conjured? And his Warpsmith, he had no connections with high-ranking Dark Magi.'

Iskandar Khayon stopped beside, studying the living ship through the oculus glass. 'That's no daemonic thing.'

'You told Ezekyle about the Mockingbird's warning.'

'The Word Bearer Pyrd has hired might be dangerous but even Word Bearers shun this kind of filth.'

'I've forbidden it but Pyrd disobeyed.' Ezekyle Abaddon, their sworn brother and Warmaster, gripped the hilt of Drach'Nyen, his golden eyes locked on the pulsing flesh looming over the oculus. Mere flesh wouldn't scare a man as desperate as determined, but Kibre knew Abaddon's gesture meant serious trouble. 'Falkus, order the crew to stop. We'll take a shuttle without direct docking.'

They were eight in the shuttle, three warlords and five veterans from the Bringers of Despair, the Warmaster's personal retinue clad in ancient Terminator armour. Kibre had chosen the best of them and personally chose relic weaponry from his personal arsenal. Like in old days, he decided to take the pilot's seat himself. Moving along the tainted side of the barge, they left behind three lipless maws in the place of airlocks. Moist giant tongues stuck out of the maws as they passed by, and red drool frothed over the deformed plating. Finally, Kibre drove the shuttle to a relatively clean lock.

A plain sound of statics was the answer to the docking request. Kibre turned up the volume, and weird hisses and howls echoed in the cabin. Even when he switched off the loudspeaker, the noise still echoed in his mind.

The cabin door slid aside. Abaddon's shadow fell over the control panels as he straightened up staring at the lock in silence. With wobbly fingers Kibre typed in the old codes of the Fourteenth. Pyrd had seldom used them after he'd taken the barge for himself during the dark years of the Great Culling. The lock opened smoothly, and Kibre sent the shuttle in, trying to find signal lights in the shaded gateway.

Helmet filters were useless to keep the sickening stench at bay. Flesh didn't grow on the inner walls yet but the gateway was smeared in drying waste and blood that would make even the Fourteenth envious.

'Pyrd has done a better job than the previous owners,' Abaddon echoed his thoughts.

Kibre frowned as he watched the sad remains of the lights. 'Some are flickering, most are off. That's abnormal, a scion of the Diasporex like him would never let them deteriorate that much. I have seen their ships burned almost to scrap but the lights… Their kind always keep the lights intact. They show the way in and out, after all.'

Empty stacks for cargo lighters and shuttles were trashed with dried dung and bones. In unlit corners whole huts had been erected out of picked carcasses covered with leathery membranes. Khayon sat immobile, scanning the place with his warp-sight, his lynx familiar crumpled up by his side. When Kibre nodded at him, he just shrugged his shoulders. 'Not a living soul all around.'

'Head to the this hangar's junction point, brothers,' said Abaddon. 'Pyrd must have sent at least one of his men to meet us. He should do that.'

'He hasn't even sent a greeting when we appeared in orbit,' Kibre growled, his hand already on the bolter hilt.

'That doesn't look like mutiny or betrayal, Falkus.'

'Something worse has happened here,' Khayon nearly whispered.

A few half-broken lamps were still lit over a pile of battered dirty metal left of exit terminals. Stepping on a thick layer of bones and half digested hides, Kibre got to the gate first and reached for the flickering control screen. The door obeyed. At once, a shaky figure emerged from the dark behind.

That was a tall, lean woman clad in red and purple carrying a seer staff as tall as them. She would have looked completely human but for a bony ridge on her elongated skull. Her mighty aura enveloped the place, and Kibre felt it clash with Khayon's protective sorcery. Kibre opened his mouth but words stuck in his throat under her commanding glance. She raised her staff to the vault, and the snarling beast of gold on the top glimmered under the lamps. The lynx flattened its ears and gave out a growl.

'Sons of the failed king, welcome to the Devouring Mother's Maw you used to know under the name of Macan Kumbang,' her voice echoed through the docks. 'You are after this ship's captain?'

Abaddon met the genestealer's gaze. 'Where is he, Magus?'

Her voice rose to a theatrical high pitch. 'We are all waiting for his arrival, so that he attended the greatest feast!'

Crooked shaking shadows showed up from the unlit passage behind her. Alien monsters with many limbs and bald purple heads, they clung to their Magus, their eyes rolled up as if they were stoned. Kibre's augmented guts spasmed when he looked down at the gnawed bones. Were there remains of their legion brothers in the nameless grave of the dock?

'I sense no human presence on the barge,' Khayon said stroking the distressed lynx's forehead. 'But the xenos are in millions. Cult Patriarchs with their broods. Ten. Dozen. Fifty. Hundred. More, more, more. Like a pile of self-digesting filth.'

'That bloody fool of a pirate should get a medal from Ordo Xenos for delivering this whole sector from the Tyranids. How many planets were stripped of their genestealer cults bare? The campaign hasn't started yet but we already have lost one battle barge. One of the better ones,' said Kibre.

'As well as one company.'

'We shouldn't stay here for any longer. They are stoned but we might fall to the same curse.' Abaddon was the first to turn back towards the exit.

On leaving, Kibre took one last glimpse of the place. The Magus had flopped to the ground, foaming at the mouth. Her minions roamed around without a spark of conscience in their buggy eyes.

'Xeno rabies. So unlike them. They are always focused on the greater goal of the Hive Mind. Yet it's absent from here. There's something else... I wouldn't risk our men to clean up the mess, Ezekyle.'

'A minute.' Abaddon waved his hand. 'A call from your ship.'

The vox came alive. 'My lords, Pyrd's Warpsmith has contacted us from the surface. We've prepared the big screen on the bridge for a direct transmission. They claim that the whole company is down on the planet.'

'What a relief,' said Kibre.

'My plan for them is spoiled anyway. Let us return,' Abaddon said, and they hurried back to the shuttle.

They kicked out a few almost comatose hybrids trying to make a den under the shuttle and flew back as quickly as possible. Upon the arrival Kibre ordered a full decontamination of their suits and the shuttle.

'Whatever thing has afflicted those vile beasts and Pyrd, it's not of Nurgle's domain. I don't want to catch a damn kind of space rabies, immune even to the warp,' Kibre said as they rushed to the bridge in their still wet bodysuits.

'They will tell us everything! I demand answers!' Abaddon said going up the stairway to the communication array.

After many centuries of their exile, all old machinery of the Baleful Eye had gone awry, replaced with warp-infused constructs by the grace of Lady Ceraxia and her Dark Mechanicus. Kibre didn't care a damn while they were effective but their daemonic spirits were hard to pacify. Only when Khayon activated a circle of seer crystals on the screen frame, the surface lit up at the touch of his mind.

A blurred projection of the techmarine's hovering throne appeared against the black cloud of the Evernight looming over rocks. The Warpsmith muttered clumsy excuses for the delay, the mess, promised to send another message to Pyrd through his own sorcerer.

'The whole company has gathered in the ground camp, my lord!' the Warpsmith ended his messy report with a sigh of relief.

'I already know that. In Captain Pyrd's shameful absence I designate you as the new interim commander of the company. Let it be ready for my direct orders,' Abaddon dismissed him with a regal gesture of the Talon.

Another marine appeared by the Warpsmith's side. First Kibre mistook him for the Mockingbird but then the picture zoomed in. Backpack torches, crimson of the Seventeenth. When he saw the Word Bearer's effete face, he clenched his fists.

'Remember this suspicious bloke tagging along before the First Black Crusade?' he whispered to Khayon. 'Erebus said he had died on the night Sargon vanished.'


	25. Episode 4 - No Grave but the Void

Prologue

The left pauldron of the Panther's overgrown armour bumped into the door frame. A growl came from the reactor pack. The pack with no reactor inside, as the xeno had said. The cryptek should have fooled him. Mockery of an older race, nothing more serious. But the armour kept on swelling day by day. Soon the Panther will reach the height and power of his runaway Obliterators. Getting stuck inside the suit isn't a big deal of a price but for a single nuisance.

He spraddled his legs, frowning at the constant pain. The Warpsmith must have turned off his ear augmetics, deep in his work. The Panther went down to the bottom step and banged on the metal door of the workshop.

'Where the heck are all of your slackers, rusty bastard? Come out and dig around in these damn systems. It friggin' keeps squeezing my bloody nuts!'

Silence. He kicked the door open and stood still. Beside the Warpsmith's throne, watching the techmarine tinkle with a heavy bolter, towered the damn Warmaster himself. The growl in the reactor turned into a howl when the voices of Abaddon's daemon sword reached the Panther's mind.

Abaddon turned his head slowly and looked him straight in the eye lenses. 'Have you been to an Imperial world, Monas Pyrd?'

A pit opened in the the Panther's stomach at the deceptively mild tone. 'Warmaster.'

'Have you been to a carnival in an Imperial city?' Abaddon paused contemplating chitinous growths on the Panther's armour. 'Dressed up as a Swarmlord?'

'Absolutely not, my lord.'

'But how can you explain this?' Abaddon pointed up at the vault, and the Panther got what he meant at once. 'This oblivion's maw? You've gone crazy, Monas Pyrd. Return my barge back to me.'

The Panther breathed in. 'My lord, the barge has been the property of my company since the Great Culling.'

'You were licking the False Emperor's boots while we were fighting for freedom. What if I tell my men your Void Leopards are still counted as a loyalist Chapter? What if I tell them you disobeyed my direct order to cull your remaining corpse-worshippers, instead setting them free?'

'I'm harrowing the Imperials in your name. I've had the Evernight excavated and repaired for your campaign, Warmaster.'

'Repaired? Your Warpsmith begged for mercy when I descended to the surface to see the ship in the most pathetic state.'

The Warpsmith didn't rise his head from the weapon during the talk. He'd probably sided with Abaddon to save his wretched life.

'You know what happens to those who disappoint me, Pyrd.' Abaddon made a sign to the Warpsmith, and the techmarine dropped the bolter obediently. 'Have your filthy suit fixed as soon as possible and go up to clean up the mess you've done. Return my barge to me roadworthy and devoid of these vile beasts. Only then you'll be allowed to get the company back under your command.'

A small flat shard of crude obsidian appeared in the Warpsmith's hand when he leaned over his master's reactor pack. 'Just a minute of patience, my lord. The Dark Apostle told me how to intimidate this wayward spirit.'

Two hours later the Panther's shuttle entered one of the last clean locks. Next to his gateway a rogue trader had docked his ship. The one working for the Inquisition, if his spies were to believe. The ship captain had chosen a perfect moment to try looting the barge, the Panther chuckled as he sent five of his bodyguards to the Stumblebum.

Crowds of blabbering alien mutants were loitering around the docks. Their stench had covered the ship. The Panther didn't dare to park the shuttle and go through the passages on foot. There had been small flyers but their smashed remains were buried under layers of genestealer waste. Long purplish heads stuck out of broken windows as the shuttle passed by, their blank eyes staring at somewhere beyond.

On the bridge, in his once favourite festive quarters, stoned genestealers were stirring under overturned tents. Inside his own gazebo a horridly obese Patriarch was snoring in a nest of picked bones. Where jolly sworn captains had once been drinking to his victories, mutants were going in giant circles on shaky legs, drool and foam running down their chins and chests. Like damn ants, the Panther cussed.

Clenching his fists in belated frustration, he ran up to the control panels before the navigation throne. The throne itself had been turned towards the oculus. Probably, a Magus was sitting there staring into the warp in wait for the swarm to come down on the system.

The Panther took out his cutlass and grabbed the back of the throne to cut the alien psyker in half, but a very familiar voice spoke from the other side. 'What a fat ass you've grown, old buddy. I bet you can't fit in this seat anymore!'

The throne spun around abruptly, and the Panther gripped the cutlass hilt, ready to engage.


	26. Episode 4 Chapter 1

The Dark Apostle's craftworld venture ruined our plans even worse than we had expected. Our navigator did his best to pull the Raptor Imperialis back to the intended route but the warp all around Ulthwe had turned into one great storm rare for even this troubled area near the edge of the Eye.

Endless tales of our visit to Ulthwe made the tedious days in the shuddering ship brighter. For a hundredth time Uncle and Sister asked Panaque about alien miracles, and the Interrogator told the same stories with new details he pretended to have remembered. Some of them were even true, but most had been made up right for the talk.

'So we drove the flyer with the sniper Exarch and the Corsair through the endless towers towards the daemon horde!' Panaque swung his hand with a sandwich, his eyes glistening.

Uncle stirred the recaff in his mug. 'You haven't told us how they looked like.'

'Well, once my late mentor sent all his acolytes to the Citadel clinic for a full medical examination. The colonoscopy vid-log looked exactly like a craftworld voyage.'

A beep from the wall screen interrupted him. Angel who sat the closest opened the incoming message.

'The navigator has got news,' he said. 'We're about to leave the warp as close to the starting coordinates as possible.'

I sipped on my recaff. 'Sounds fine.'

'If you count out the shadow of the Swarm.'

I hurried to the bridge without finishing the lunch. Fluffster stood over the control panels typing in a long code or message, Aphedron and Imudon working with secondary cogitators by his side. Only when I patted his paw, he turned his head reluctantly.

'I'm quite busy, Volentia. You'd better reassure our friends.'

'I need more details for that. Everything looks like we have stopped for the Tyranids to have a snack.'

He opened another window for a few commands, and my dataslate tinkled. 'Read through the report before we land. You'll have to learn how to interpret them by yourself.'

I decided to spare my crew of trouble and filter the information before talking to them. Under the platform stairway there was a quiet corner used for keeping cleaning machines between cleanups. While it was empty, I sat on a side shelf and started scrolling through the columns of texts and rows of picts.

The system we were to jump out in was located in a sparsely populated region on the very edge of the sub-sector. A single inhabited world was but a small mining colony without warp-capable vessels. The first mate had sent a few communication requests to the command center of the miners' settlement but nobody answered. The shadow lay over the whole system, its maximum concentration over the next planet, a jungle world deemed unworthy of colonizing. Segmentum Obscurus was relatively secure concerning Tyranids but small reconnaissance splinter packs broke in from time to time by ways unknown to the Inquisition. One of many attachments contained a full description of Tyranid packs encountered in the sector recently. All of them belonged to Hive Fleet Tiamet from the opposite end of the galaxy.

My crew reacted to my extremely cautious retelling with the stoicism of pooped-out vagrants who see shit too often to be bothered by another portion. Uncle sighed and poured a shot of amasec into his recaff.

'Lassie, are we gonna hang here for long?'

'Fluffster and the navigator need to calculate the coordinates. It will be much safer to move with small cogitator-driven warp jumps.'

'For the better, I'd say but for these hungry xenos. They keep coming our way in every damn adventure. No one has told them this is Obscurus and we belong to Ordo Hereticus.'

'Heresy or xenos, both foes of mankind,' Angel objected.

'I doubt Kryptopterus pays that much attention to plain old heretical conspiracies other than the Genestealers,' said Uncle.

'Wonder why we haven't seen him around Pholiotina yet. He has reasons to avenge his captivity,' I said.

The ship shivered lightly. A green notification window popped up flickering on the screen. Back to the realspace, the Raptor Imperialis was moving to the mining world to take anchor in high orbit. There were no hive ships in the system but the background presence of the Shadow stifled even a psyker as weak as me, heavier than around genestealer infestation. Angel spoke in a calm voice but flared his nostrils, tapped on the table, tense as if facing a sworn enemy.

'Fate itself seems to tell me I had to stay with Ordo Xenos,' Panaque hummed. 'Because I'm better at chatting with creepy blokes than tinkering with cogs.'

'Your talents fit the tactics of my Ordo even more naturally,' I said.

'I wish we got into at least one case like your first ones, ma'am. Since I joined the team, we've been stealing the jobs of all other Ordos.'

I admitted there was a particular charm in being a city cop for special cases, far from high-echelon machinators, where ordinary skills are useful and time is yours to manage. Tagging along with Fluffster meant to be something in between a lab mouse and a schoolgirl listening to a wise old teacher's admonishments. Without power armour or good weapons, even a latrine mock Obliterator became a deadly adversary. The Emperor be merciful upon us, another Black Crusade will end quickly, and I'll return to my normal duties.

Mines and settlements looked abandoned from orbit but I insisted on sending a few more signals. In a few hours, an answer arrived from the surface. The file damaged with whole parts missing, it came from a mountain bunker deep under the central ridge of the biggest continent. The refugees warned us about 'leaping horrors' in the hills. They were running out of food, one of their generators was broken.

'If only we had more shuttles,' Fluffster said with a sigh when we gathered on the bridge an hour after the arrival. 'I'll try to repair their machinery. Food… More complicated but our stocks are enough to share.'

'Folks, to the owl,' I commanded, life now looking a bit brighter when there was worthy job to do.

'Just don't get out in the open air.'

'At least you don't force us to stay on board.'

'Speaking in the Emperor's name is what inquisitors do.'

'Fluffster, you've changed so it's hard to believe this determined, confident man is you. Once you would pester everyone with constant grumbling,' I said stuffing toolcases under my seat in the owl.

'You say that like it's a good thing,' he answered in his old grumpy tone. 'After the return of the two scoundrels, I haven't had a spare minute to enjoy my pessimistic musings with a block of cheese.'

Uncle chuckled from his place by a loophole. 'Cheese keeps on vanishing right after I put it into the fridge.' Blushing, Panaque stuffed back a cheese wrap that stuck out of his belt pouch.

With Panaque and the marines in, the owl was loaded to the limit. I had had half of the lockers emptied but, apart from repair tools and parts, we had to take at least a few crates of medicines and nutrients in case there were any injured or starving.

While the owl was making its slow descent, I leaned against the wall looking down at rust-coloured mountain ridges and dark green spots of forests. Fleecy clouds were floating by the owl windows, pearly white in the early autumn sun. Over the hills the owl speeded down to the minimum, sliding over the thick grass strewn with flowers. The very idea of lictors lurking in those sunlit groves and brambles seemed alien.

But soon a few discreet details ruined the rustic idyll. No birds chirping in the woods. Chitinous plates and claws showing through the grass here and there.

'Hormagaunts,' said Panaque. 'The first wave died within a month or so, and lictors picked them clean to save the biomass. Probably left these parts on the pheromone trail for the next wave.'

Fluffster was watching the augur marks on the minimap. 'Five lictors detected in the area. I doubt they'll attack the owl but they'll surely follow us. I'll tell the first mate to fire a few volleys into the foothills.'

'We've got self-guided shells, you said,' I reminded him.

'Not enough to take out every one of them. Don't forget about their main force on the next planet.'

'They don't seem to have ships.'

'But, most likely, they've arrived through one of the structures built by Fleet Tiamet. If the Fleet sees us as a significant threat, we'll have to hold our ground against a whole swarm of gaunts.'

'But if the Fleet hasn't sent trygons or carnifexes yet, it's not that interested in the miners,' said Panaque. 'We'll have a chance to evacuate them.'

The entrance to the bunker was hidden behind a pile of large boulders beside a clifftop footpath. Bleached hormagaunt plates lay in a rampart before the adamantium gate over the remains of sentry turrets torn out of their loopholes and broken to scrap. Deep claw marks crisscrossed the surface from top to bottom. After a few fruitless attempts to contact the miners, I stuck out of the window and held my rosette to a scratched control screen on the gate. Watching over the purple points of lictors on the map moving towards the cliff, I closed the gate once the owl slipped under the massive door into the unlit tunnel.

To save energy for the living bunker, the miners had deactivated all wall screens, auspexes and lamps. Only a quarter of an hour later first lights showed up in the far end. My vox came alive. 'Who's here?'

'Inquisitor Volentia, Ordo Hereticus.' The studied phrase already came out by itself when spoken for a thousandth time.

'Ma'am. Ma'am.' The man on the other end stuttered and cleared his throat. 'The Emperor be praised. Just a second… We'll turn off the sentry guns.'

Two mercenaries in cheap flak armour were waiting under the closest row of lamps. Fluffster stopped the owl next to a turret stand, and I found the rosette in my coat pocket before going out. For your good old loyal citizens, a rosette was enough to make even a girl in old rags and a battered carapace look like a messenger from the Emperor Himself. I nodded to their awed greetings and headed to the opening doors of the living quarters leaving the mercenaries to gape at the first space marines they'd ever seen.

My arrival was a triumph I hadn't had since the first missions. Despite the Ordo's dreadful reputation, all dwellers of the bunker were running to the vast chamber of the command center to see us. Pale, emaciated men and women clapped their hands, reached out to touch my hands, the marines' armour, hugged Sister and Uncle.

'He's heard our prayers!' Trembling voices sounded bolder with every second. 'He's sent His devoted warriors to save us! His Angels will smite the xenos and let us out to our homes!'

A tall elderly man with black circles under his eyes squeezed between the excited miners, got down on one knee and kissed both my hands. 'Venerable Lady, I am the foreman of the mining colony 53-01. Let me express our deepest gratitude. The xenos have driven us out of our homes. Nearly killed our astropath, left us without any link to the outer world. It's a miracle of His grace that the only message we were able to send has arrived to the Ordo.'

It was wise to pretend we'd really came for their plight. I was listening to his solemn speech with a friendly smile, nodding after every long phrase. After the tirade he caught his breath and hastily pushed aside three youths staring at the marines towering over us.

'Please, my lady, take a seat at the cogitators. We're sorry to have no treats for you. Our food stocks ended two weeks ago. Five mercenaries took a truck to bring food from an emergency storage to the other side from the town. On their second trip, the leaping horrors chased them through the night. We couldn't muster enough will to send another expedition, we are all shaken, shaken so bad.'

His style of speech made me think more of city officials than rugged sons of mining worlds. There were many clerks or businessmen from ruined hives who started new lives enlisting to rogue trader crews or taking part in the colonisation of new planets.

'I'm so moved by your warm welcome, Foreman,' I said, really feeling warmth. I was welcome somewhere after a series of fails and scandals. 'We've brought medicaments and food. Sister Gallina will examine the sick and injured.'

The miners met the last phrases with cheers. I gave out a few brief orders to my crew and typed the Inquisitorial password into the field on the cogitator screen.

The foreman leaned over me. 'My lady, if you need a specific file, I'll find it myself in a second.'

'It's all right. I'm only looking for a detailed map of the mining complex.' Before he could reach for the screen, I opened the data archive folder.

'The tenth subfolder from the above. This one, 'info_old'.'

It was a collection of miscellaneous documents left since the colony foundation. Named with random number combinations, the files were in a mess. Estimates and receipts together with samples of application forms. In the bottom of the subfolder I found two maps. The first one was a plan of the mines, the second was what I needed.

The complex ran along the ridge on both sides of the mining area. The town with fields, greenhouses and a poultry farm occupied a lowland by a river. Further to the east, twenty miles from the houses, a narrow road led to an underground storage in the foothills. I clicked on the storage sign to see the plan.

Behind chambers of food stocks and supply parts there was a hangar with five large orbital shuttles. A tunnel led to a clifftop landing stripe.

'Foreman, tell everyone to prepare for departure,' I said. 'We need all remaining trucks for the evacuation. If we begin tomorrow morning, the last shuttle leaves before sundown. Every column of refugees will get fire support from my own flyer and our ship.'

The foreman's happy expression faded. 'Have I heard it right, ma'am? You're not going to battle the xenos? Shall we leave our town to be destroyed?'

'Emergency,' I found a good word to avoid long explanations.

'This pack is nothing against your mighty army.'

'Well, the mighty army I've got is all here.'

'Are you a real Inquisitor at all?' an elderly woman shouted from the crowd. 'I've seen Inquisitors in the news! They have large fleets, armies of stormtroopers who can engage a whole host of traitors!'

I pulled a crooked smile. 'It happens so our Ordo has more Inquisitors than armies nowadays.'

'Inquisitors purge and burn filthy xenos and sinners!' another man said behind my back.

I took a lighter out of my pocket. 'Give me a bucket of gasoline, and I'll go burn two dozens of lictors.'

Silence was their answer. With weary blank faces, the miners looked down at the floor.

'I sold all I had before moving here,' one whispered to his neighbour.

'She'll take us away to execute as unnecessary witnesses.'

'She's a slaver who stole a rosette.'

Whispers got louder. A few were already clenching their fists despite the presence of the space marines. I got up and raised my hand.

'You risk nothing if you believe me. I swear by the Emperor you'll get new jobs and new homes. If you wish, you'll come back to the planet when the threat has been eliminated.'

Silence.

'Soon you'll run out of all stocks. Lictors will kill the fighters you'll dispatch to bring food. Unlike gaunts, this kind of Tyranids is quite long-lived. Every single beast is stronger than a marine. Your flashlights and peashooters will only anger them.'

'We're to set off now,' the foreman said after a pause. 'I'll tell my folks to take their possessions.'

'Not so soon. I'll visit the hangars with my tech-priests to check the shuttles. You may as well send a truck for more provisions in case there are any problems. Meanwhile, Sister Gallina will treat the ill.'

Angel volunteered to embark with us but, though with a heavy heart, I left him, the least problematic of my marines, to guard the shelter in my absence along with Uncle. Panaque who had already found buddies among the youngest workers asked me to let him stay as well but Fluffster insisted on him joining us to study new complicated Machine Rites.

The owl left the bunker through another tunnel that led straight to the town, followed by a truck with the heaviest-armed mercenaries and the senior enginseer. Purple dots were moving around the other entrance but the abandoned town was safe by now. We hoped to reach the storages before sundown, the only problem on the way being the last portion of the route where collapsed rocks had blocked the road. Lictors had attacked the previous expedition right when they left their truck to reach the gate on foot. I suggested destroying the debris from orbit but Fluffster argued against that fearing further rockfalls.

We took off right on leaving the tunnel, Imudon and Aphedron watching over the vicinity from the central loopholes on both sides of the owl. Panaque was chewing a sandwich browsing through a tech manual more to pretend he was busy. I sat next to Fluffster who was napping over the control panel with his volkite gun on his knees.

'Even your restless mind needs some respite,' I said.

He answered with his eyes closed, 'Just pondering. When it's so quiet in the van, I keep on slipping into old memories. Of the days He walked the Earth with His sons. When I was young, looking forward for a new life that was sprouting right before my eyes. Unlike Lord Mentor and Peachy, I haven't seen all the creepiness of the Old Night.'

'None could have guessed a giant rodent in a Magos' robe by my side is older than the Imperium. Funny when a big dog like you turns up in a district cop's retinue.'

He avoided the hint. 'You can guess why I prefer the company of Aphedron and Imudon to your older crew. Uncle, Angel, Sister are all good folks but the weakness of the modern Imperium has left its mark on their souls. The twisted, crumbling state of nowadays has little to do with what He planned for us but try to explain it to those Codex-compliant obedient boys or scared teachers from parish schools.'

A pang of bitterness hit me. 'But they're my peers. Reliable to do the work the Ordo wants me to. Now, the war with the Panther is almost over, if the Farseer's right. But again, I had to leave the old buddies in the bunker instead of doing these last missions together. It's easier when you've lived too long. A hundred acolytes more, a hundred less, generations are born and pass away while you're reveling in your just-as-planned.'

'But still, you've got a chance to choose your life. Something I and my peers have been denied after the Heresy. You belong to the Emperor and yourselves, I'm sworn to the Throne's cause with no right to back off or fail.' He pointed at the screen and picked up his gun. 'Keep your eyes open.'

A lictor was crawling up a slope towards the gate. But for the augur, we couldn't even notice the elusive predator able to merge with the environment. Two lictors were moving through a grove on the edge of the town farmlands but I hoped to get to the place before they overtook us.

I pressed on the vox bead. 'Enginseer, do you copy? A xeno beast ahead. Stop three hundred meters away from the rubble piles and wait for further orders.'

Imudon and Aphedron got up to their feet at once. 'The damn monster, it's not gonna show up until the truck gets there,' Aphedron said.

'Two minutes to finish it,' said Fluffster. 'Lest you wish to meet its sweet siblings.'

The purple dot stopped right under the gate. When I tried to locate the lictor through binoculars, all I saw was grayish rubble. Small stones on the top of the pile moved at a brisk gust of wind, and I clung to the closest loophole. But only a splinter slid down to the path.

The owl door clapped. Before I could look back, first bolter shots cracked right underneath. The debris stirred, and a giant silhouette split from the pile, swinging its claw-blades at the charging marines.

Aphedron reached the lictor in a few leaps. His force sword clashed with the dreadful claws, and sparks of warp energy spilled out over the rocks. Under Imudon's bolter fire the lictor's prowess didn't quite help it. The claws swished over Aphedron's head, left grey scrapes on the purple of his armour. Step by step Aphedron retreated to lure the beast closer to the owl where Fluffster had raised his volkite gun taking aim at the beast's head.

Bleeding from many bolter wounds, two of its limbs severed by the force sword, the lictor still fought back with all ferocity of his kind. Closer to the truck with every step, it was now shifting colours again to blend in with rocks and trees and distract our gunfire. Only claw strikes and dazzling sparks of the force blade let us trace the enemy's movements.

Without waiting for our orders, the passengers of the truck opened fire. Fluffster shook his head. 'They hope to hit it. Well, a useful intention but they'll spend more ammo than the beast deserves.'

Aphedron jumped into a stripe of sunlight, and I saw a bloody trail behind the lictor who chased him towards us. A blast of bright white flashed by my side. Fire enveloped the lictor as the volkite beam hit its head. In a second burning pieces of chitin scattered all around. Aphedron shook fire off his cloak and headed to the owl with his shiny crest held high.

'It could have been worse,' said Fluffster stroking the cooling gun.

'Everyone, get out of the truck!' I shouted into the vox.

Imudon, as taciturn as before, walked towards the gate while Aphedron started boasting the victory once we joined the marines. Stepping over smouldering chitinous plates, I hurried to the gate with the rosette. Though cheap and out-of-date, the machinery obeyed at the first attempt. The heavy door slid up, lights turned on under corroding vaults of the bunker.

A long corridor led to the hangars in the far end past chipped doors of storage chambers. Some of them had been opened recently, some seemed to have grown into the wall covered with a thick layer of mold. Despite the working ventilation system, the air was stale and stank of decay.

I stopped before the door of the main food storage. 'Take a necessary amount of provision,' I addressed the mercenaries. 'You're free for today. But we need the enginseer to check up the shuttles.'

'What about… the beasts?' one of them asked gripping his lasgun.

'There are two lictors stalking us but I'll order my ship crew to vanquish them with self-guided shells. It'll give you time. Don't worry about us, the owl's been made for such predicaments.'

The hangars were dimly lit and trashed. Probably the first colonists used empty stacks of the largest chambers to dump scrap-metal and other rubbish they had hoped to re-use in future. The shuttles stood in the last stacks, covered with rusty stains.

Fluffster knocked on the surface. 'They could have made them out of tin cans. Just as cheap.'

'You mean the miners will fall from orbit?'

'Not to that extent.'

'So hardly worth complaining.' I sighed watching the calm enginseer of the colony trying to unblock a jammed lock.

When all the shuttles have been examined, Fluffster beckoned. 'Bad news for the miners. It will take days to make these take wing again. But good news, we have these days while the navigator's busy with the jump calculations.'

I smiled. 'Time to be spent with use. Why not teach me and Panaque a few Mechanicus tricks?'

Four days had passed in non-stop work. Changing corroded details, fixing crazed software, we only had time for a couple short talks with our friends a day. The truck had returned with a decent stock of food, and we hoped it would suffice until the end of the repairs.

In the evening, right when I had carried a box of spare parts from a storage room and sat down on the threshold to have a rest, my vox beeped. Uncle's tone sounded shocked even for his usual paranoia. 'Lassie, very important. A battle… raging right at the gates. The foreman thought it were our men but I told him we couldn't allow a force that powerful. Take care.' I barely heard his voice through blasts in the background.

I rushed to the hangars, chills running down my spine. Panaque and the enginseer stood by the other exit listening to the outside noise.

Panaque looked back at me with a frown. 'The three have gone to find out what the heck's going one there.'


	27. Episode 4 Chapter 2

Gunfire and shell explosions got closer. Screens on the wall still showed nothing as the skirmish was out of the augur range. I pressed my ear to the door. Nothing but blasts and claws screeching against armour. The suppressing echo of the Swarm had ceded.

'Definitely a human army,' I said. 'Aeldari and their spiky cousins are way more discreet.'

Panaque shrugged his shoulders. 'I'd think that could be Orks but they're never that quiet. Maybe a rogue army of Enclave T'au got here from the other end of the galaxy through a Webway gate.'

'Silly even for an Interrogator,' I grunted checking the battery of my laspistol. 'I don't quite like their hushed attitude. Nurgle worshippers are the most famous folks who avoid getting noisy but for coughs and farts.'

The enginseer wiped sweat off his forehead. 'Merciful Emperor, let both sides finish each other in the process.'

I reached for my vox bead. Long beeps with no response. 'Wait a second. Our sailors should have noticed any newcomers in the system.' Silence in the vox. Then a metallic voice answered, 'Unable to connect to the channel. Call up later.'

I cussed. 'Daemons of the warp know what has friggin' happened.'

'Ma'am, please.' The enginseer flinched as if he'd bitten into a lemon. 'Speak of the warp…'

'Marines!' Panaque shouted pointing at the screen.

In twilight mist I couldn't tell the heraldry but the silhouettes in Terminator armour without horns or tentacles looked quite Imperial. The armour pattern looked archaic though, that reminded me of nearly-renegade Chapters that stalk frontier sectors. Many of those were little more than robbers and pirates who just avoided being caught red-handed. Surely they'll be very glad to meet an inquisitorial team.

'Just in case,' I told the enginseer, 'we're your assistants, not members of the Ordo.'

He sniggered nervously. 'So you're a fake Inquisitor after all.'

'It doesn't matter now.'

Three terminators walked up to the entrance so I finally saw their pauldrons. White sharks over black and dark grey.

'It's wise indeed,' I said with a sigh. 'Judging by what little they've written about the Carcharodons in Ordo archives, they won't slaughter us. But they'll rob the planet clean and leave our team here till the end of days.'

'Anyway they've dealt with the beasts,' said the enginseer.

'They've found the gate!' Panaque put his finger to his lips. I quickly took off the rosette and stuffed it into a hidden pocket under the coat lining.

The gate shuddered. Blades scraped on the metal plating on the other side. With a flash of bluish light a power claw cut through the lock. I ran to the closest shuttle and stood still holding to the side when the gate opened, and the giants appeared in the doorway. They strode past us between the stacks in complete silence and rounded up the enginseer who pressed himself against the wall. His face turned pasty pale, and his toolcase slipped out of his loosened fingers.

'Who are you?' a bass voice bellowed from the armour speakers as a terminator with sergeant insignia gripped the enginseer by the collar.

'The s-s-senior e-enginseer of the colony, my l-l-lord,' the poor man wheezed out through his chattering teeth.

'Servant of the Mechanicus then,' the sergeant growled. 'And these two?'

The enginseer closed his eyes. 'M-m-my civil assistants, m'lord.'

I looked around in vain hope that Fluffster jumped out of the shadows to tell one of his cool Terran threats and scare even the Carcharodons shitless.

'You two,' another marine said. 'Come when the sergeant calls you.'

I stepped forward slowly and humbly on purpose as if paralyzed by fear. Panaque pulled his politest face.

'My lords,' I said bowing to the marines.

'Follow,' the sergeant ordered. 'Enginseer, give us a detailed account of the storage contents.'

'Only the foreman has access to…' the enginseer muttered.

'Fine. He'll pay both tithes for the purge of his system.'

I climbed up to the manhole of their Land Raider and took a seat in the back. The Carcharodons were forbidden to recruit any members of the Adeptus Terra and their belongings but any self-employed or private property was theirs to take for the sake of ancient edicts. Sadly, the Raptor Imperialis, Lord Mentor's ship for undercover operations, didn't have any Adeptus marks so they'd already purloined it for sure. On the other side, the disguise had worked. I only had to persuade them to take Uncle and Sister along.

When the Land Raider started, I pulled out my dataslate to type a coded message. The closest marine's eye lenses stared at me, and I stuffed it back frowning. The enginseer huddled up in the corner. Only Panaque took a handful of candies out of his pocket like in a tourist bus. He offered them to me but I shook my head.

The trip ended in half an hour. The Carcharodons brought us to the central square of the town where three other squads had already gathered all the miners from the shelter. Three lictor corpses ripped to shreds by power claws and chainaxes lay under the street lamps. Blood running down the grey armour suits across the peculiar totem carvings looked black in the lamplight. Some of the Carcharodons had already attached trophy claws to their pauldrons and belts. To my surprise, Angel was nowhere to be seen. Fluffster knows his ways, I thought with relief.

The scared miners stood in lines before the waiting terminators. The word captors would fit there best of all. In the other end of the line I saw Uncle and Sister next to the foreman, Sister wearing standard Medicae scrubs instead of her Sororitas carapace and robes. They were supporting a lanky aged man with a green band over his eyes and a staff with a bent emblem of the Astra Telepathica.

'Self-employed workers, a step forward!' another sergeant roared. 'We'll take the best of you who are worthy of serving on our Fortress-Barge!'

Most took a step with much more eagerness than on the day of my arrival.

'They didn't have a tenth of this awe when I tried to help them,' I whispered into Panaque's ear.

He giggled. 'The drawback of being nice.'

'Hush!' A marine walked up to our end of the line.

The foreman got to his knees rubbing his eyes. 'You're our deliverers, noble lords. We are obliged to express our sincerest gratitude…'

'So pay the tithes,' the sergeant interrupted his pompous speech. 'We need ore. We need serfs.'

'We're all ready to follow you.'

I thought I'd smack him on his smarmy face. The sergeant didn't seem impressed. 'You'll stay to watch over your mines. We need fighters and domestic serfs.'

'They have civil technicians who are trained with weapons, strike leader,' one of the marines who had captured us addressed the sergeant.

'They'll fit in.' The sergeant strode along the line, picking the strongest among the awed miners and mercenaries. To my relief, Sister was among the chosen. Another sergeant pointed at Uncle but the first one shook his head. 'He's a fine soldier but too old. Foreman, what can you say about this one?'

'Aye, sir. Fine soldier.'

I took a deep breath. 'Please let me speak, my lord.'

Their gray visors turned towards me. My heart jumped out of my boots but the first sergeant nodded.

'He's very experienced, the best gunman of the colony,' I went on hastily. 'A retired Guard veteran. He might seem aged but he's a perfect instructor who's trained many of us.'

'True, many of us,' Panaque backed me up.

'Shut up,' the sergeant bellowed. 'Soldier, come here. We've got many new recruits. You'll turn them from scum to fighters.' Uncle glimpsed at me with a half-smile and stood beside Sister.

The astropath, now leaning on the foreman's arm, raised his staff. 'Good lords, I hope you have a spare place in your Astra Telepathica choirs.'

'Return to your duties,' the sergeant snapped back. 'We don't need slackers.' He pointed at me and Panaque. 'Technicians, have you been accepted into the Mechanicus ranks?'

We both shook our heads.

'Come here too.' He watched us take places in the row of the chosen, then exchanged a few phrases with the foreman and headed back to the Land Raiders. 'We're embarking. The Shade Lord has just eliminated the Tyranid threat on the neighbouring world so we expect the ore in no longer than an hour.'

When we got out on a grass plain after a short ride in the overcrowded battle tank, the marines lined us up before a battered Thunderhawk painted with black and white Chapter sigils. A creepy memory made my hair stand on end. Years ago an enthusiastic Ordo rookie stood in a crowd of factory workers before the captors in similar grey. Loyalists, traitors, not that much of a difference in our times. Traitors are even easier in the sense of screwing them without scruples. When you're a person that pathetic, you strangely feel way more natural in the role of a petty recruit, and it's even easier to do the job than competing for people's awe with bruisers armed to the teeth.

The inside of the flyer smelled of rust and chemicals. So ancient it was about to fall into parts in the air, the Thunderhawk was rocking up and down in the wind until it left the atmosphere. I hoped they'd also taken my owl from the bunker. The contents of the drives were protected by Inquisitorial passwords, so no forced outing to fear.

Still, I was utterly puzzled by Fluffster's disappearance. There had been a couple hours to stage an impressive deus-ex-machina appearance along with the marines. When the Carcharodons led us out of the Thunderhawk into the dark cold bowels of the battle barge, I kept on looking around for the familiar red-robed giant.

In the scantily lit docks quiet serfs in grey overalls had gathered around the owl already parked between cargo shuttles. Guns and ammo from our lockers lay on the rockrete floor before the owl door. As we passed by, a serf carried out a crate filled with food from our fridge. The recruits' enthusiastic smiles faded at the sight of their hobo-like future peers, and I couldn't resist a bit of gloating. Serfs bowed their heads as the marines walked between the stacks and returned to their wordless work. Tattoos on their faces and exposed arms, though smaller, resembled the emblems on the marines' armour and Chapter banners hanging from the walls.

In complete silence the recruits boarded ship shuttles. Even Panaque didn't dare to whisper comments or munch under constant overwatch. Uncle looked at me from time to time as if going to ask a question, but I only blinked back. Sister was sitting with her eyes closed, her lips moving in prayer.

The shuttles were rolling through endless dusty corridors past parked vehicles and storage doors. This part of the ship was little different from standard Imperial vessels but for its age and desolation I'd only seen in traitor fleets. Warsmith Limax kept his Galeos Parthenos in even sadder state, I recalled the undercover visit when I'd got a new acquaintance with a passion for gulls.

A large hall with wall cogitators and a row of security scanner gates separated the docks from the main quarters of the barge. Before the terminals a mixed picturesque company was waiting for the newly arrived recruit-stock. A heavily augmented techmarine in darkened red of his rank, an apothecary with a white pauldron, high-ranking serfs in decorated cloaks over their grey robes. A servo-familiar shaped as an angler fish was floating over their heads, a screen attached to its belly, its large augur eyes watching over the place.

The sergeant who had captured me and Panaque pushed us towards the techmarine.

'Kia ora, brother. These are their senior enginseer's assistants. Both trained as soldiers.'

The techmarine nodded his helmeted head. 'Useful. Need to have them scanned for surprises.'

I looked back at Sister standing before the apothecary. One of the serf seniors, a stocky old woman, passed by Uncle and the other mercenaries towards three young accountants in the end of the line. The sergeant gave me another nudge. I shrugged my shoulders and headed to the closest scanner.

Shrill beeps echoed under the vaults. All marines turned their heads in synchrony, startled by the interruption of their beloved calm. The angler stopped hovering over the scanner, the 'lure' signal lamp over its mouth flashing red. The blooddamn rosette.

The techmarine's mechadendrite coiled around my forearm, and he dragged me closer. 'Chips, hidden weapons?'

I muttered a few indiscernible words as if scared. Honestly, without the 'as if' this time. They shouldn't kill me anyway, the voice of reason tried to overcome the fear. But still, they might hold me captive in an icy oubliette on the lower decks for an eternity of their outer dark travels, even blackmail me with the lives of my friends in exchange for the Ordo secrets.

'Object identified,' a machine voice came from the angler's maw. 'Inquisitorial rosette, Ordo Hereticus.'

'Bullshit,' the sergeant grunted. 'Maybe another glitch.' He put his gauntlet on my shoulder. 'You, go pass through that one by the armoury.'

There was another beep as I reached the adamantium gates in the far end of the chamber. The heavy doorleaves slid open slowly, a Rune of Access glowing on wall screens on both sides of the entrance.

'The Shade Lord is coming back,' the veteran sergeant who had been picking recruits in the town said to the other warriors. 'Let no one out until he arrives on board.'

'Show your rosette,' the techmarine ordered. 'Is it yours or stolen?'

I pulled out the seal of my rank. 'Even if so, you do take the worst criminals to your service.'

The techmarine snatched it before I could stuff it back to the pocket. 'For an attempt of deception, you are detained until we find out the details.'

The recruits gave a loud gasp of dismay but the veteran sergeant shook his clenched fist at them. I sat down on the armoury steps, too pooped out to invent whimsical explanations. That very time when I really missed Fluffster's presence and initiative.

Both marines and serfs stood at attention when another large shuttle stopped next to the one that had brought us here. Another mighty psyker's presence caught me unawares. Whispering litanies, I turned towards the procession striding across the hall towards the armoury. A warrior of formidable height was marching at the head, flanked by veteran terminators. Scrimshaw charms and bleached skulls hung from his armour slick with alien blood. The psyker, an old librarian clad in deep blue of his rank, brought the rear, his staff topped with a green seer stone tapping on the floor. Alone without a helmet on, he was a pallid ghost with eyes darker than blackstone. But for his grey hair and tattoos, he strangely resembled the Flying Fox.

'Inquisitor again?' the leader roared as the techmarine handed him the rosette.

'She was hiding among the miners, Shade Lord. The scanners detected and recognized her seal. There's doubt it really belongs to her.'

The Shade Lord swung his clawed chainfist at the armoury doors still open wide. 'She could have sneaked to every corner of the barge.'

Uneasy about this sinister third-person discussion and even more about the fate of my crew, I stood up and bowed my head. 'My lord, I am also present here just in case you have questions.'

'You have deceived us, Inquisitor,' the Shade Lord bellowed on. 'I am familiar with the ways of your kind. You are not the first one ready to accuse us of heresy or treason. To slander us.'

The librarian's aura swept over me, cold as ocean depths, and I flinched and gasped for air under the stare of his black eyes. Rumours of loyalist Night Lords in the ranks of the Chapter seemed grounded indeed.

'Matakite,' he said a single word to the Shade Lord.

'This gets better all the time.'

'Her psyker gift is weak. I sense a faded touch of taint but I have to do a thorough examination to trace its origins.'

'Later.' The Shade Lord touched my shoulder with his claws. 'Inquisitor, follow us. Your rosette will be checked and your future fate decided. Are there any of your men present on board?'

'So that you could throw them overboard?' I said.

'All Adepta and their retainers are rahui. Under protection. It is forbidden to harm them, as the Forgotten One swore to the Void Father on the Day of Exile.'

I lingered pondering as the marines were studying the recruits' faces and garbs. Panaque waved his hand with a carefree smile. 'Just in case, I'm an Interrogator, almost a full-fledged Inquisitor.' He strolled past the techmarine and sat down on the steps by my side.

'Uncle, Sister, come to me,' I said finally. 'Sister Gallina is a member of the Adepta Sororitas, Uncle is my bodyguard.'

'Not too many.' I felt a note of contempt in the Shade Lord's voice.

I sighed. 'You may donate so that I hire more.'

'Follow us,' he repeated his order.

'The Initiate is already back to the Librarium,' said the librarian. 'Let him search through the bases while I'm away to the Reclusiam to cleanse my mind of the Swarm's filth.'

When the shuttle stopped on the edge of a large platform between two carved gates, a black-armoured chaplain in a helmet shaped like a shark skull met us before a stream of dark water running from a molten crack in the wall to a deep shaded pond. A serf girl in a cloak of steel-coloured feathers was kindling fires in two massive barrels on both sides of the passage.

The Shade Lord bowed his head as he stopped in the circle of reddish light, the only spot of warmth in the sombre hall. 'From the outer void we come.'

'Darkness there, and nothing more,' a booming voice came out of the shark maws. The chaplain started reading a litany in a language I didn't know. In the end he put his left gauntlet over the girl's head, and she addressed the gathered warriors with another incantation. Then the chaplain and the Shade Lord exchanged a few ritual phrases. The Shade Lord knelt beside the stream and washed blood off his chainfists. The others followed.

'Every Chapter has its sacred customs,' I told the Shade Lord once the cleansing rite had been completed. 'What shall we laypeople do?'

'Wash your hands and face and take off your boots before coming to the holy place,' the chaplain answered instead.

Stepping by the cold floor, I headed to the door with my boots in my left hand. I put them by the threshold, blew away wet locks of hair that stuck to my cheeks and passed between rows of banners into the dimly lit Librarium. Totem poles covered in spiral patterns and twisting silhouettes of ocean predators towered over cogitator stalls and reliquary safes arranged in a half-circle around the place of contemplation paved with tiles of polished blackstone. Censers were rocking on smaller poles encrusted with green seer stones like that on the librarian's staff. A large oculus window provided a view of the starry void beyond. Once the barge leaves realspace, it will give way to the wild colours and shapes of the Immaterium.

In a greyish cloud of incense from the censers a marine in a plain robe was staring at the black of the space with his back to us. He turned slowly as our auras came in touch with his, and his strangely familiar features struck me. Grown almost to the height of his brethren, his skin and hair bleached by the gene-seed, he still looked like someone from a very distant past. He seemed to have recognized me as well but stayed silent in the presence of his superiors.

'Initiate, an Inquisitor has come with a visit to the barge,' said the Shade Lord. 'Find the profile attached to this rosette in the database.'

With a half-smile the initiate obeyed. A holo-pict appeared over the projector once he held my rosette over the sensors. Sadly, one of my worst picts as it often happens with documents. The Shade Lord waved his claws, and a short info appeared under the pict.

'Shade Lord,' the initiate dared to speak out at last. 'Pardon my insolence but I know her and her crew.'

His voice solved the riddle. 'Taphius,' I breathed out. 'Boy, you've grown into such a brute I barely recognized you. The Silent Judge told us you had been taken away to join a Space Marine Chapter.'

'A long story,' he said with a chuckle. 'But I don't bear this name anymore.'

'Hush, Initiate Twenty-eleven,' the Shade Lord ordered. 'I have not allowed you to speak to the Inquisitor. How many heretics did she burn during your previous encounter?' Again I heard sarcasm in his chilly tone.

'But for her, me and my fellow psykers would have been burnt by the Iron Warriors sorcerer, lord.'

The Shade Lord nodded. 'Inquisitor, let us make a deal. You stay in my quarters as my guest until we arrive to the next Imperial port. As a favour in return, your crew will teach their skills to our serfs. You will not be allowed to leave this part of the ship nor mingle with the ship's crew.'

'Sounds like an honest agreement.' I was unsure about whether to tell them about the missing part of my team but decided to let it run its course. There was no need for future suspicions towards me.

'Wise to avoid unnecessary discussions. Now my men will take your retainers to their stations of duty.'

'Even my Interrogator?'

'He is a tech-acolyte. Neophytes are not to be excluded from daily work. You may enter the Librarium for psychic practice when the Chief Librarian lets you to.'

A narrow spiral stairway led to the Shade Lord's quarters from the platform. I picked up my shoes at the entrance and waved my hand to my crew as the Chapter Master dismissed everyone but two terminators of his honour guard. Taphius was definitely eager to chat and share the news but the old librarian returned from the Reclusiam to give him new tasks.

The door of his private chamber was half-open, and I heard voices talking quietly. Serfs, I thought first but the Shade Lord made a sign to his guards and activated the claws of his chainfists. I followed him in, my laspistol drawn, but bumped into him as he stopped abruptly. A sharp smell of mjod hit my nostrils. Inside, in large chairs around a strategium table Fluffster and my marines sat sipping on their kegs. Both terminators raised their spears. The Shade Lord stood still in a menacing battle stance.


	28. Episode 4 Chapter 3

Fluffster got up to his feet, relaxed as usual. The three stayed sitting with kegs in hands, their bolters resting on the table by their side. For a few seconds Fluffster and the Shade Lord stood staring at each other, then Fluffster nodded.

'From the outer void you come, Lord Tyberos. Greetings from Lord Mentor.'

'Darkness there and nothing more.' The Shade Lord deactivated his gauntlets and took off his helmet. A half of his bloodless face bore nightmarish traces of an old wound, tattooed skin and flesh split exposing a cheekbone and part of his upper jaw with sharpened teeth. He walked up to the table and shook Fluffster's outstretched paw. Fluffster pulled back his hood, and they pressed their foreheads and noses together in a hearty greeting.

'They robbed the owl while you were hiding,' I told Fluffster. 'You should have sent a heads-on.'

'You kept these noble warriors busy so we could pay them a discreet friendly visit,' Fluffster said pouring a keg for Tyberos.

'If I wasn't aware of Lord Mentor's customs, I would have rebuked you for scorning the sacred rites for guests.' Tyberos' disfigured visage twisted when he spoke. 'Intrusion means challenge for a duel to death.'

Aphedron grinned. 'You hope to win against a veteran of the Long War. Good luck then.'

'I know who you are, pardoned traitor. Lord Mentor has bent you both to his will so what can I do but step back.'

'The ship in orbit also belonged to Lord Mentor,' said Fluffster. 'He's gonna take it back in person.'

Tyberos clenched his jaws. 'He will not find a single pretext to blame us. We are sailing back to the Maelstrom where enemies of His are resurfacing to prey on the Imperial borders.'

'I've contacted him through your astropaths.'

'I'll order my company to stay awake until he arrives.' Tyberos squeezed the keg so the metal bent in his fingers. 'You may choose any place on the barge to spend the remaining days. The Inquisitor has agreed to be my guest.'

'My robe speaks for me,' Fluffster chuckled. 'You've brought precious archeotech and xeno relics from the Ghoul Stars, my agents tell me.'

'They are yours to study, lord.'

Knowing Fluffster's love for solitude, I didn't hope he'd rid me of the Shade Lord's hospitality. The marines departed to the barge's training grounds before I could exchange a few words with them. Too tired to act as a socialite, I retreated to a modest guest cell in Tyberos' vast compartment, letting him to ponder over this pain in his ass with the half-full keg.

Chill came from the unpainted adamantium and plasteel of the walls and floor. An Aquila was etched into the corroded surface over a narrow cot in the back corner. Small inset lamps on the ceiling cast white light as cold as the old barge itself, so I reached for a carved metal bowl with a silvery candle that stood on a square table, the only other piece of furniture in the room. My numb fingers barely obeyed but after a few clumsy clicks of my lighter a tiny spark of orange fire kindled over the wax residue. I turned off the lights, threw my boots, my carapace and both weapons under the cot.

The bluish smoke rising over the candle filled the room with a scent of sea salt and driftwood. It was the middle of the night. Drowse was slowly overcoming me. I pulled a thin plaid up to my chin, looking at warm glints of fire dancing on the ceiling. In the dark between awake and asleep I was back to the convent by the sea. Winter winds are blowing from the shore, and the dormitory on the second floor smells of seaweed and wood burning in the big fireplace. If the storm passes by dawn, Sister Tutoress will take us to the dunes after the lessons. She was younger than I am now, a thought from the present mixed in with images of the past. The little orphanage girl curled up in her sleep hugging the pillow to wake on a peaceful morning.

A knock at the door broke into the dreams. It's night in the convent dormitory, I thought, still among the visions of my childhood. A louder knock. I opened my eyes and sat up on the cot. The candle had burnt out but the faint smell of smoke lingered in the dark. The barge was sailing on the high tides of the Sea of Souls, the planet left far behind.

Yawning, I found the lock sensor. The door opened with a tinkle, and white light from the corridor fell into the room. An elderly serf stood in the doorway with a trolley, food containers stacked up neatly.

'My lady, greetings from Lord Tyberos,' she said handing me my breakfast. 'He demanded that you come to the Librarium by standard noon.'

'I've got a friend to see there, ma'am,' I said smiling.

'It is pleasant to hear. Lord Tyberos will send a more detailed request to your room so that you could read it on the screen or download to your dataslate.'

I thanked her and hurried back to my cot where I could take a quick munch and get ready for our host's new antics. The message was as brief as his usual speech style. He seemed to have a concern about the Chief Librarian's yesterday warning and suggested that I got mind-scanned. May the Emperor be merciful so that they didn't take it into their heads to dump me before asking Fluffster. Lord Mentor's word mattered there though. Even if the old pariah had given up the idea of killing me, these fishy fellows wouldn't have the guts.

Our luggage from the owl had been delivered to the compartment, so I found one of my winter shawls in the lockers. My frozen hands in my pockets, I walked past the wordless terminator guards and ran down the spiral staircase.

Thin wisps of incense smoke were oozing out of the Librarium door. I knocked on the carvings, sent a psychic greeting but no one answered. Whispers of artifacts mixed with old memories lingering in the seer stones yet there were no soulfires shining inside. Only a minute later I heard Taphius' voice in my head.

'Sorry, ma'am, the folks are all away. There's a small door in the wall, just ten steps to the left. Go downstairs, I'm around the tanks.'

'Tanks?' I asked but the mind-link disconnected.

A gust of bitterer cold blew into my face when I pushed the door. Steep steps polished by uncounted years went down into complete darkness. The yellow beam of my flashlight lit up only a few turns of the spiral, the rest swallowed by the eerie murk. Memories of the frigid undervaults of the Chaos shrine popped up as I looked down, and I pressed my hand to my pounding heart, tears burning my eyes.

After many turns I finally reached a massive black door with sharks encrusted in pale wraithbone. It opened once I reached out to touch the lock. There was silence as at the bottom of a dark icy sea. The flashlight beam slipped across the metal floor and fell on a transparent reservoir filled with water that occupied a whole half of the giant chamber. Black waters rippled at the light, and a whitish sharp snout bumped into the thick glass on the other side.

'Our glorious totems,' Taphius said from the unlit back part of the chamber. 'Swimming with these cuties is considered a fine kind of meditation here.'

Water running down his robes, he stepped out smoothing his drenched hair. He narrowed his jet-black eyes at the beam. Only his features reminded me of the sickly psyker boy I had worked with on Auriglobus but soon face tattoos would rid him even of that likeness.

'Hi, Initiate What-They-Call-You-Now.' I gave him my hand. 'It's been a while since we gave it to the Iron Warriors.'

He chuckled shaking it. 'Not the best memories. The stupid vulture warlock mocked me, he was like, I'm sick, I'm worthless. Let him say it to my face now. It was his damn engine that made us sick.'

'A buddy of mine set the warlock's ass on fire some time ago.' I decided to keep the Medrengard story to myself.

He nodded. 'I'll do even better in a couple years, when I earn the Black Carapace and a Void Name.'

'You've withstood all the trials.'

'Pretty hard but I coped. The Sharks demanded a share of psykers from the Sisters but we were too few, so they agreed on a candidate for the Librarium. Honestly, I volunteered. First, I was like, what a bunch of cranks, but then… I thought it was better than getting my eyes burnt out and then spending my whole life sending dumb messages from one fool to another. Have you heard anything about our fellas? I only know that Intha was chosen by the Sisterhood to join the Black Ship crew after the training course on Terra and Luna.'

I recalled the Silent Judge's tales. 'Scalaria has become a ship astropath.'

'Not the most boring job to do, unlike city choirs.'

'The yours is still fancier. From what I hear about the Sharks, they've got a free lifestyle compared to cloistered Chapters.'

He showed his sharp teeth in a happy grin. 'Gotta see things even Inquisitors don't come across often. In the Ghoul Stars we traded artifacts for reconnaissance from the Slaughth who gather dreams and thoughts from all around the Halo. They had nurtured young Primarch Alpharius before he fell to the darkness he had encountered in the derelict bowels of one long-dead world.'

I winked. 'Are you allowed to tell these tales?'

'The more you Inquisitors know, the better. There's a forbidden warp-current running to the far south that drives hapless ships to a charnel-kingdom under a black sun on a black sky. There are worlds with gates small and big that can take you to the other end of the galaxy and even beyond.'

'Last year I visited a world of portals that belonged to the Old Aeldari Empire. There was a door to the most horrible of all Chaos shrines.' I paused but decided not to tell him about the mark.

He shook his head. 'I've been to long deserted shrines only. Well, the Pale Nomad must be back to the Librarium. Te Kahurangi, the Chief Librarian,' he said before I could ask him. 'He's our koro, I mean, one of our elders. Only a few generations away from the Wandering Ancestors. He can answer your questions.'

The Chief Librarian's soul-blaze shone so bright it reached the ship's bowels. Taphius ran up the stairs through the dark, led by his psyker-sight. I followed holding to the wall so as not to slip on his wet footprints.

The Librarium was still quiet but for a subtle cracking of fire in the bowls. Seer stones were floating around Te Kahurangi as he sat on the yesterday place of contemplation, staring into the shifting waves and whirlpools of aether in the oculus. Two middle-aged psyker serfs were walking on tiptoes between artifact shelves to check the seals on storage cases. One of them, a sombre man with lizard tattoos on his face and arms, put his finger to his lips when Taphius walked in, but Taphius pointed at me.

'Lady Inquisitor?' I heard the serf's psychic voice. 'Please wait until Lord Librarian addresses you.'

I sat down on a low couch next to a censer. Whispers and voices grew louder as the salty scent enveloped me. Every artifact had its voice, its colour, its memories. Some spoke of alien cities that were no more, some screamed of madness and carnage. I closed my eyes, letting their stories to take me away to the past beyond all human remembrances.

'Ma'am.' Te Kahurangi's cold voice called to me through the tales of the Old War and the Fallen Empire. ' The trace of taint gets stronger when you look out with your mind-sight.'

'Do you know its source, lord?' I sent back.

'The smell of sulphur I encountered in the Halo, at the first altars of the Chaos Gods. The ancient death that appears under many guises. As the Old Ones have gone into oblivion after the Fall, it keeps seeping into the Imperial borderlands.' He got up without a sound and beckoned me to a row of solid enforced cases at the back wall. Images of the Aquila and arcane sigils covered every inch of their surface, and an energy shield generator was working non-stop to maintain a defence field around the whole corner. He stopped a few steps away from the cases, and a locker opened at his psychic touch. A small glass box floated out and landed on Te Kahurangi's outstretched hand.

Inside a sharpened shard of black obsidian was spinning in the very middle without touching the sides. A crimson flamelet locked within the shard was flickering through the stone with every turn.

I exhaled, stricken. 'Like a splinter of Torquetum with smoke inside.'

'Just as cursed,' he grumbled back. 'Take it.'

The shard jumped into my palm once I reached for the box. A torrent of power hit me so the whispers turned into yells. I clenched my fist, trembling from head to toe with the unexpected might. It felt easier than the Torquetum piece that had nearly killed me at the gambling table. As if it had been waiting for me. My solar plexus prickled with thrill as I squeezed the shard so tightly its edges cut through my skin.

Te Kahurangi put his bony hand over my head. A wave of chill came down on my mind, and my fingers loosened. I froze up staring into the black of his eyes.

'Calm down.' His voice reached my ears from afar as if miles of ocean water separated me from the Librarium. 'Calm down.' I gasped for air struggling to swim up from the bottom, and icy water rushed into my lungs.

I breathed in and out with closed eyes. Air. Dry land. I'm lying on the couch. With effort I turned my head to the soul-lights and opened one eye. Red drops on the floor. A dull pain in my left hand.

Taphius leaned over me. 'Holy shit.'

'What the…' I wheezed out. 'What's this bloody piece of crap? A wisp from the Chaos shrine. Once a Raven made a hole in Imudon's side with a stone blade like that. When we were enemies.'

'We found it by the Boros Gate, on an ancient place of dark worship. It calls out to you.'

'Why?' Te Kahurangi turned to me from the lockers.

'I've been to places… similar in looks and mood.'

'If you have reason, avoid anything that even remotely reminds of this shard. But your kind are either fools or Radicals. Or, the worst of all, both at once.'

Taphius sat on the floor by the couch. 'The audience is over,' he whispered to me. 'Feel free to have a rest but I'll have to see you off before I start training.'

I stayed in my cell the rest of the day and most of the next one, coping with headache. Room serfs brought food and candles and took away the containers without a word as I lay face down on my cot. Without the shard's newfound power I felt the weakest in years. I should say a prayer, I thought as I glimpsed at the Aquila but the weakness had erased words of litanies from my mind. Later. Images kept on popping up once I closed my eyes. Imudon's fiery gaze locked on my face, he raises both gauntlets to the vault of the cave fane. His successor's soft pace as he strolls into the grotto to take me to his dungeons. I looked up at him but his features dissolved into a blob of darkness with two crimson slits staring at me.

By the evening I finally recovered enough to swallow a few mouthfuls of tea and a piece of bread. I read my bedtime prayers and fell back on the cot to have a night of relatively quiet sleep. In the morning enough strength had returned to get up and have a walk on my numb legs.

Shivering in the cold draught as if in fever, I wrapped the shawl tighter around my shoulders and headed to the Chapter Master's quarters. The old rules of ship etiquette allowed an honoured guest to dine in the captain's company. Fear struck me as I touched the door but the need to scout things out was stronger. I doubted he'd be glad to see me but he'd probably keep his temper until Lord Mentor's arrival.

'I have come to pay my respects to Lord Tyberos,' I told the silent terminators. They saluted with their spears. The doorleaves opened.

A single candle was lit on Tyberos' table as he prepared to break his fast. Clad in just his robe, he still looked as menacing as in full armour. I stopped in the doorway, squinting at his visage that looked barely human in the quivering reddish light. He nodded, and I pulled a cheerful grin clenching my jaws so as my teeth stopped chattering.

'I am sorry for staying in without greeting you in person yesterday, lord,' I said in my most friendly tone. 'Hope an intruder won't spoil your appetite.'

'Come closer, Inquisitor,' he bellowed.

He held out his hand as I pulled out a chair to sit across the table. His teeth glimmered in the candlelight through the ripped cheek. My stomach in knots with the sight, I put my palm into his, and he bent his pallid head to me. I breathed in and looked into his eyes like Fluffster had done as I pressed my nose and forehead to his.

His aura warmed up a bit. 'There are monsters comelier than me but much more eager to croak you.'

'Not the looks make a monster.' I smiled, the nervous excitement settling down.

'It's never wise for Inquisitors to be squeamish about loyal allies.'

'So the other way round.'

Tyberos tapped on the wall screen over his shoulder. At once a serf pushed in a trolley through a back door. 'You're welcome to wash your hands and share the meal.'

Chewing on grilled fish, I stared at the tiny shuddering flame. Silence felt the most natural within the tomb of the ancient hull. The kind of quietude ocean depths and the void of space have in common. The waves of the warp were carrying the giant barge like a nutshell to the lands of darkness and nothing more.

'Heading to the heart of the great Maelstrom,' I said watching the course line run across the star map on the lock screen.

'After we have fulfilled our duty to Lord Mentor,' Tyberos answered reluctantly. He paused studying my face. 'His servants often interfere in our affairs by deception though we are always honest.'

I chuckled. 'A shot at me. To be as honest as you demand, I didn't want to stay behind on a backwater planet for years after you'd snatched our ship. You're not supposed to care about civil servants.'

'Their kind makes more problems than use on board.'

I turned the fork over and over, picking the right words. 'We'll repay your hospitality if you wish. The rosette is the only sign of my employment with the Ordo. I doubt they'll look for it in the warp currents or the outer void.'

His scarred lips formed a grimace that could have been a smile on a more conventional face. 'You hope to get out of the business the Terrans have imposed on you.'

I could share everything I knew about Fluffster to strike a deal, I thought getting ready for the next phrase. But he was still a friend. One of the few friends I'd had. Paying with his life for my freedom was the price I couldn't allow. 'Lord Tyberos, I'm a psyker you'll need for handling the Librarium stuff. Let me try to persuade Crinitus to leave us on your ship. Everything has gone or going to the dogs so the Maelstrom will be a better place for a cop gone rogue.'

'Curious how your retinue does not fit your character, Inquisitor. They are all dreaming about their old homes while sailing to the outer dark. Even the Interrogator who is supposed to follow into your footsteps.'

'I haven't had any home since fifteen. And can do without it.'

'Te Kahurangi has told me about your previous eerie ventures. Even that part of your mind seems sealed.' He pointed at the swollen cuts on my left palm.

'I wish I knew more about it myself. The only acquaintance who can give me answers keeps on skedaddling or mocking me. Crinitus knows more but prefers not to give it out. Why not chase the mockingbird together?'

'You have your duties, I have mine. The Void Father obliges us to toil, not abandon them like cowards. Have the due courage to return to your job.'

Days passed one by one with no land in sight. I visited the Librarium daily to exercise and talk to Taphius. Though I tried to stay away from the protected lockers, every time the wounded palm ached as I looked at the case with the shard. Sometimes the wound would open, and I wiped drops of blood before they could smear over grimoires and artifacts. I didn't feel brave enough to return to the employment discussion when I met Tyberos again but the mystery was nagging me worse and worse as I found out more about the Carcharodons' earlier discoveries. Hiring any of their serfs as a reconnaissance spy was too much of a headache, and I couldn't afford it with the all-time hole in my wallet.

One evening I was coming back to my room after a training session when sirens wailed in the corridors. Red lamps flickered on the walls, warnings showed up on the screens. I held my rosette over the closest one. There was a piece of the star map with a blue point of the barge surrounded with smaller escorts. Right ahead a strange round object the size of ten Gloriana battleships blocked our path in the warp. I cussed and ran to the shuttles to get to the bridge.


	29. Episode 4 Chapter 4

Serfs were setting off to cannon control centers. I took a seat in a shuttle going to the bridge with naval officers and enginseers. A lieutenant and two midshipmen in plain grey tunics with shark badges on their chests leaned over a dataslate, their talk too quiet to hear from my back seat. When it rolled out of the bay, the serfs all bowed their heads in silent prayer. Whispering litanies of battle and danger, I reached for the belt only to recall I'd left both weapons in the room. What a blockhead I'd become losing myself to neurotic musings, I thought, my mind fuzzy despite days of concentration and purification rites. Days after the trial, the faint longing for the power bestowed and withdrawn hadn't gone.

The calm of the barge had given way to the habitual fuss of a void battle. Commands and announcements clamoured every second, enginseers were exchanging loud remarks in the binary code as they scurried around giant terminals on the bridge. Instead of white lamplight the ancient platforms were basked in blood red of emergency lamps.

Above all, on a throne of steel between the stairway to the navigator spire and the sigil-encrusted dome of the Machine Spirit, Tyberos sat clad in armour, his chainfists and bolter ready for any boarding actions. The elite terminators of his guard stood to attention along the edge with activated power spears. A large hologram of the ships prepared for the engagement was spinning slowly over the inset projector in the center of the platform. A level lower was the main control terminal where the barge's decorated captain was shouting orders into the vox.

'Check the shield generators! Redirect all reserve energy to the main gun modules!'

I stared at the unknown object that could dock dozens of barges like the ours in its bowels. Perfectly round in shape, it was strewn with small points that formed weird patterns on its surface. It was moving towards the fleet that had slowed down to the minimum.

'What's this damn ball?' I asked the navy lieutenant climbing the stairs to the upper platform.

He frowned. 'An especially vile kind of xenos, ma'am. Haven't fought against 'em yet, but heard much from the Captain. They roam around in their battleships blowing up every vessel they come across. Every point on the ball is a cannon.'

On the middle level I stopped to look for my friends in the crowd. There were grey shapes of the Sharks towering over buzzing serfs but no red or purple or plain ceramite anywhere. My friends were probably locked in the living quarters or the forge. I took out my dataslate and opened the menu to connect to the ship network. Once the link was established, a popup window flashed red in the corner of the screen. 'Inquisitor, Lord Tyberos demands your presence near the main command terminal.' With the slate in hand I hurried up, scrolling down the list of channels on the run.

'Put it back or you miss the majestic sight, Inquisitor,' Tyberos' bass roared from the above. I flinched and nodded, stuffing the slate into the pouch. My fingers stiff with weakness and anxiety, I missed, and the slate slid out on the steps and rolled down. I ran after it but a sailor on the platform underneath caught it and handed it to me.

'My lord, I didn't notice the barge leave the warp,' I shouted to the Chapter Master.

'Because they have stumbled upon us on the warp road. If we exit the Immaterium now, we will get into the heart of a white giant. Such battles are rare everywhere but the outer dark where older races keep to their approved tactics.'

'Do you know these ones well?'

'Better than most. Better than I would like to.'

'Are my people safe, Lord Tyberos? I couldn't even send them a message.'

'It will wait, Inquisitor. Let them do their jobs. The main control center needs a seasoned tech-priest to watch over the battle and no less seasoned fighters to guard it.'

I walked between the terminators and stopped before the hologram. A long list of parameters appeared under the projection of the alien ship at my touch.

'It's almost two times bigger than the Phalanx,' I said.

'And five times as strong in firepower. What a luck to come across them after a few void battles without repairs.'

'Risky to go on raiding in such state.'

He shook his head, and I realised the lack of sense in this remark. 'Inquisitor, we are nomad-predators since the Wandering Ancestors left the Imperial space. Only in times of the Grey Tithe the Mechanicus allow us to visit forge worlds.'

I changed the topic. 'Are these xenos pirates who want to claim your loot?'

'Opportunistic hunters. Their thirst for fighting is second only to Khornate armies of berserkers.'

'That's why you've prepared for boarding.'

'These are mere rites of battle. If the Papalotl strike for serious, they will blow us to pieces with a few salvos. But I remember what the Ancestors had sworn on their way beyond the last borders. We have got no grave but the void, and so it will be until the Void Father Himself lifts our vows.'

I found the name of the race in the description of their mobile fortress, and another holographic image appeared under the battleships. A sleek arthropod silhouette similar to a giant moth with six long limbs and four wide wings with the same patterns as the rows of cannons on their ship.

'Were there butterflies on the world you come from?' said Tyberos. 'Imagine a butterfly three meters in height clad in a power exoskeleton. They were peerless sailors in the times after the Great War in Heaven but dabbled in sorcery foul and forbidden. The capital of their empire turned to a wasteland inhabited by abominations, daemons were ravaging their systems incessantly. So it was until the Old Ones turned their eyes to the border between realspace and the Immaterium torn by the daemonic spells. Among them was Lileath whom the Aeldari know as the Maiden, the one who watches over planets of wilderness and sends prophetic visions. But peoples of the Maelstrom and wanderers of the void honoured her as the Lady of Tides, mistress over the Great Sea and creatures of aether who dwelled there before the Chaos corruption. Her wrath begot a tremendous wave that rolled through the warp. Once the Papalotl felt the gathering storm, they hurried to their fortress-ships in terror, and the tempest threw them away like grains of sand and swept over the daemon-ridden planet. Until now on they have been roaming across the galaxy, afraid to return to their lost home for the shame of their ancestors' sins.'

'Didn't expect that eloquence from you, lord!' I said, entranced by the beautiful legend. 'Even Inquisitors who dig that deep are very few.'

'The outer dark tells its stories to those who are eager to listen. Now beware. The fleet will enter the range of their cannons soon.'

I opened the characteristics of the xenos' weapons and defences. 'They don't have void shields, unlike us. Our cannons can strike through their plasma shields.'

'Have another look at the generators. We don't have enough energy to power all the shields and cannons at once.'

I leaned over the platform edge, looking at the captain's screens over his shoulder. Most of the generators connected to the shields and the main guns were green, the yellow ones powered smaller batteries on damaged modules. But now, after a closer look, I noticed grey disconnected compartments here and there.

White points came flashing on the smaller screen next to the energy monitor. At the same moment the barge shivered from top to bottom. The impact threw me aside, and I rolled between the terminators down the steps. Emergency lamps were flickering in a feverish rhythm, the sirens' drawling wail drowned out the orders. I bumped my shoulder against the railing and got up holding to a sailor's outstretched hand.

'They've teleported torpedoes, ma'am,' he said. 'You're unarmed. Sorry for the advice, it would be better to send a messenger serf for your armour and weapons.'

'How many of our anti-torpedo batteries working?'

'Sixty percent, ma'am. Until this hit.'

He stepped aside to let me close to the screen. The yellow shields and a third part of the greens had turned red. The living quarters and the reactors were intact but only half of the bigger cannons had been spared by the first attack.

'Ten compartments of the lower decks destroyed, sir!' a trembling voice shouted from the speakers.

'Only the empty ones, the Void Father is merciful,' the captain grunted to himself tapping on the screens.

The next jolt shook the platform so the captain slammed into the screens. I gripped the railing with both hands and froze up. Absolute silence hit my ears worse than the crazed howl of sirens. Darkness fell over the bridge.

Then a mechanical voice clamoured with pitiless indifference. 'Critical damage to the energy systems. Unable to project the shields. The ship network will be shut down in five seconds. Five. Four. Three.'

'I thought space marine barges should be tougher,' I grumbled more to myself.

'I thought space marine chapters should have a homeworld to have their barges repaired,' the captain snapped from the dark.

'Librarians, build a kinetic shield over the main reactor!' Tyberos roared from his throne over our heads.

Librarium. Librarium. The thought flashed in my hazy mind, sent an adrenaline wave through my body. Power. A source of power. Unguarded. Evil. But lesser evil. An urge stronger than before. Warm blood trickled from the wound down the sleeve. The last chance. For the crew. For me. I started a litany trying to give it a better thought but the explosive mix of fear and lust for power didn't let me recall more than the first words. The urge I had wanted to muffle with the ideas of duty for years. With the indoctrination. Every Inquisitor turns radical. Most think I'd already made my own turn. Power. I shouldn't die today. I pressed both trembling hands to the pulsing solar plexus.

The wisp of crimson was radiating away in the black depth, invisible to the physical eyes. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaws and ran forward, my psychic glance locked on the sorcerous flame, jumping over the unconscious sailors. The barge had drowned in impenetrable inky black of the ocean bottoms but the sixth sense led me through the corridors with unbelievable speed. I could swear I'd only passed two or three crossroads but I was already standing before the gate of the Librarium.

I pushed the deactivated door, and it slid open. Embers from overturned censers were smouldering on the floor, giving the same ominous shade of crimson to the billowing smoke. The energy field had failed but the blessed sigils still suppressed the whispers from the lockers. They burned to the touch when I tore them off the lock. The case opened by itself once I removed the wards. The small box soared out spinning in the clouds of smoke. I reached for it with both hands, and the shard fell out to my palms.

A surge of might nearly ripped my soul away from my body. Quiet whispers turned to words. Words of promise. Words of power. I shook my fist with the shard, and a massive artifact stand rose over the floor like it was nothing and bumped into the vault. Data crystals and artifacts came down like hail on the tables and stalls.

'The might of sorcerers and kings,' a familiar voice whispered. 'The barge will perish. A word, and the shard will take you away. To anywhere you want. Make your sacrifice and rise.'

Shaking with power much bigger than I could wield, I held my breath, fearing to shatter the damn barge with a single flinch. Wrong. Something utterly wrong. Something that will make me a puppet, not a queen. If I escape alone. I breathed out, ready to drop the shard but stuffed it into the pouch instead. I'll be careful. Maybe one day I'll train well enough to manage its power by little, not channel it mindlessly.

Wiping off sweat and blood, I pushed grimoires away from the couch and sat down. Nothing remained but darkness. But emptiness. In a second the world will break apart in a burst of unbearably bright fire. No grave but the void. I should have gone to my friends instead. I'd abandoned them. We're born alone, we die alone. What if we don't meet beyond the last gate after these bloody minutes of weakness?

A white lamp lit over me. Hisses and cracks came from the wall speakers. Far away, Tyberos was shouting at someone. 'You have violated the deal, Chieftain!'

An artificial voice answered, 'You are to blame, Lord Reaper. You have removed the beacon from your barge. There are many unworthy armadas around on these lost routes. We will work it out on Oldshadow if your systems last long enough to get there.'

'Volentia, are you fine?' Taphius called from the gate. 'What terrible mayhem. It will take hours to put everything back on the shelves. Still, it was wise to get here from the bridge.'

He waved his hand and flopped down next to me, squinting at the mauled locker. I prepared for the most problematic discussion but he paid little interest to the mess.

'Lord Tyberos was speaking to the xenos commander,' I said.

'Aye, he had bargained with this damn genocidal moth even before they took me away from the Black Ship. Hope he'll get the repair costs out of him on Oldshadow.'

'What's that?'

'A nasty place. A very nasty place in the very heart of a warp storm. You've probably read about the Yu'vath.'

I scratched my head. 'The race that vied with the Eldar but lost to human crusades. Black mages and slavemasters.'

'That's one of their trade outposts, now more of a colony of survivors who fled the fall of their kingdom in the Calyx Expanse. They don't openly worship the dark gods here but welcome all kinds of scoundrels on their sorcerous markets.'

'The barge is nearly ruined,' I said. 'Wonder how you managed to fix at least some systems.'

He smiled. 'We have to thank your sage. It was clear he was a great prodigy even on Auriglobus. Here, your wonderworker has repaired the crazed servers of the main energy system with such rare Martian codes even the Master of the Forge was astonished.'

'He's from Holy Terra. Lord Mentor's friends are all special folks.'

'Don't mention this Lord Mentor in our Chapter Master's presence. He once appeared on board in the middle of a warp whirlpool and scared even the oldies shitless. He ordered Lord Tyberos to change the course, and our commander obeyed without questions.'

'Crinitus isn't as fierce as the old pariah but always finds a way to bend the others to his will. I hoped you Sharks could take me away from their control that has gone obnoxious.'

'We're exiles but loyal exiles, you know. But honestly, I can but express my sincere condolences. You're caught if they've decided to have you as a pawn or an agent. Inquisitors are Lord Mentor's favourites.'

I got up to my feet. 'I'll take a nap in my room until we're there.'

'I'd advise you to stay. It will get rough soon.'

The rocking shook the mutilated barge as warp tsunamis threw it up and down in the stormy Great Sea. I recalled the legend of the wave that had destroyed the corrupted alien world and carried their fortress-ships to all corners of the galaxy. The fall of the Aeldari had happened in the same way, the Yu'vath had been smitten and scattered by unknown forces even before the human empire entered the Dark Age. Is this the cost of supremacy for all sentient races?

Struggling with nausea, I repeated the litany of warp travel with an anti-motion sickness pill under my tongue. The librarians and the psyker serfs had gathered before the screen, their voices joint in a choir to protect the navigator.

When the rocking ceased, I lay face down on the couch, too weak to move. Taphius patted me on the shoulder. 'A xenos pilot cutter has found us. The worst hardships are over. If we leave out the other guests of this wonderful place, of course.'

I turned on my back and put both hands under my head, lazily watching the circles of our ships move across the screen after a small dot of the cutter along a meandering pass that led to a planet surrounded by all kinds of vessels large and small. An enormous black object among the docked ships caught my eye. Much larger than even the familiar fortress of the Papalotl stationed next to it, it was elongated and pointed on one side as Aeldari ships.

'Is it a craftworld?' I asked staring at the giant ship.

'It used to be,' said Taphius. 'But I bet it was taken from the knife-ears. Our scanners would have detected the Aeldari.'

The barge had entered the eye of the storm. The gathered psykers headed back to their duties. I got up with effort when Te Kahurangi walked past me.

Taphius raised his eyebrows. 'Where are you going?'

'I have to persuade the old men to take me to the surface. Those alien mages should have answers for one obnoxious riddle I have to break or it breaks me.'

Buckling my carapace on the run, I jumped out of a shuttle in the docks ten minutes later. To my surprise, Aphedron and Imudon were already there, waiting before the entrance of a Thunderhawk.

'It's been a kaboom.' I pulled a wry smile.

'Thank the Emperor that the old bucket is still rocking along,' Aphedron chuckled. 'I bet even a junk shop owner would screw up his mug at this pile of scrap-metal.'

'Except for a Yu'vath then.'

'Oldshadow is a pile of junk much worse and more decrepit than the bucket,' said Imudon. 'I hoped I wouldn't come back here after I'm done with the old job in the dark shrine.'

I didn't dare to ask him for trusty contacts. The more I talk to him, the likelier he finds out about the shard, I thought with vexation. Still I needed to stay close as I felt stronger around the seasoned warriors.

'Are our folks alright?' I asked them.

'Safe in the living rooms. Angel also volunteered but Tyberos insisted on him guarding the machinery with Fluffster.'

Tyberos and Te Kahurangi appeared in the other end of the dock with the usual silent retinue of a terminator squad. Behind them I saw the most unexpected companion. Panaque, in full battle gear and his best cloak, strolled forth with an air of smugness second to Aphedron's only.

'You'll get a rival soon, Magnificent,' I said waving my hand.

He grinned. 'I'm ready for an honest challenge then.'

'Inquisitor, I know why you are here,' Tyberos said as they came level with us.

'If even the Interrogator is allowed to visit the place, his superior has the right to join the expedition.'

'He has served with Ordo Xenos. You belong to the Hereticus. Do you want to rouse the marketplace sniffing around or running after whole bands of heretics?'

'As you've found out recently, I'm quite good at blending with companies.' I put my hand on the pouch to fortify myself with the creepy power of the shard.

He examined my face. 'I guess you will be safer in our company than here.'

Panaque, cheerful as always, walked up to me, nearly bursting with enthusiasm and news. 'Oh, ma'am, we've all missed you. The forge is no worse than your Librarium, I swear. Fluffster has shown me archeotech from the Dark Age of Technology, taught me to write command codes for a few rare ship types. I've helped him to reconnect the energy systems to the reactors.'

I shook his hand. 'Tell them I'm looking forward to joining them again. But for you all, we wouldn't have got even here.' A spark of irritation from Tyberos' aura reached my mind, and I changed the topic. 'You should know more about these winged muggers.'

He scratched his forehead. 'My first mentor mentioned them in his lectures but in those days I was busier with stuffing candies into my mouth every time he turned to the screen. Fluffster has told me much more. Their fortress-ship is made of pure adamantium. They were the race who discovered it millions of years ago. Even the holy Phalanx was probably made in the image of these flying ramparts by unnamed human artisans. Now the Orks are their main foes.'

His jolly eloquence didn't cease during our unhurried flight through clouds of whirling aether. He commented on the ships we passed by, boasted the bits of alien lore he managed to recall from his first months in the Inquisition. Only when the Thunderhawk landed, Tyberos shook his claw at him.

'Sorry, sorry, lord, I'm just delighted and proud…' Panaque jabbered on but Te Kahurangi raised his hand, and Panaque stopped in the middle of the sentence, his eyes open wide.

Through the door entered a tall humanoid shape, long-limbed and gaunt as a skeleton, leaning on a staff topped with a chunk of veined obsidian, and a sulky aura fell over us. Even though I had seen picts of the Yu'vath in manuals and encyclopedies, the reality turned out to be much creepier. Ornate jewelry of black and gold glimmered on the xeno's thin neck and wrists, a cloak of midnight blue embroidered with eerie runes dragged behind the guest. The xeno pulled off the hood of his cloak, revealing a pallid peaked face with fully black round eyes. His bloodless lips moved, and gem-encrusted sharp teeth shone in the lamplight.

'You are welcome to Oldshadow, dear guests,' the xeno said in High Gothic. 'One of your Chapter's gene-sires has often visited this place. And it is not the one called the Night Haunter.' His chuckle sounded like a cough.

'Greetings, venerable trade agent,' Tyberos answered dryly. 'Your drones have already examined the barge.'

The Yu'vath tapped on his staff. 'It will cost quite a lot, even with a discount.'

'I have a claim against Flamewing, the Chieftain of the Wandering Storm colony.'

'He is in the Hall of Commerce now. But your claim will be delivered to him soon so the dispute can be solved to mutual agreement. Trial by combat, if I am not mistaken?'

'Exactly.'

'You will be summoned to the arena in due time. Follow me to discuss the prices.'

He stepped out with relaxed majesty into the cold twilight of the alien city. Panaque ran after the marines. I stopped in the doorway for a second, clutching the shard, then walked out of the Thunderhawk on the specular obsidian pavement.


	30. Episode 4 Chapter 5

Dark streets twisted down the flat slopes of the hill with thousands of shuttles parked on the top. Despite the chilly wind so strong I had to take off my hat so as not to lose it, the air felt stale. A dismal presence lingered over the place, obscuring the psyker-sight. In the center of the square towered a shiny black construction made of what looked like molten blackstone. Vaguely similar to an enormous furnace, it was covered in glowing sorcerous symbols from top to bottom. Spectral fire flared in its maw, and a flow of psychic energy was streaming up to the dark sky where the storm raged on beyond the clouds of crimson and purple. Right over the furnace the sinister black triangle of the craftworld rocked in the aether gales on the way of the stream. I stared at the furnace trying to recall where I'd seen its likeness.

'Good Taphius is away on the barge,' I said, smitten by the memories. 'A small copy of this machine devoured most of his buddies.'

The trade agent's lips formed a mean smile. 'If someone fails to pay their debts or is caught cheating or stealing, their souls are fed to the furnace so that the great storm persisted.'

'I'll send a pariah instead of myself next time,' said Aphedron.

'Pariahs and blanks are strictly forbidden to tread on the soil of Oldshadow,' said the trade agent.

'Inhibitors are a good idea then,' Panaque said with a giggle.

'Once in a while, they try to sneak in despite the threat of death. Last year, your Imperium sent a disguised Culexus assassin to kill a human sorcerer lord in the central guest house. The possessed guards can see through any disguise. The Masters of Trade sold the assassin on the slave market of the Undercity to a mage who needed a pariah to craft and power a reliquary ward.'

'No matter what you see in the streets, not a word of offense to the city officials,' Te Kahurangi whispered to me and Panaque. I nodded without arguing.

'Rich honoured guests get royal service on Oldshadow.' The agent clapped his bony hands, and a circle of warpfire lit in a glowing gateway that led to the largest street. Four horrid, many-limbed giants stepped out of the circle on the pavement, carrying a palanquin of carved ebony and purple damask the size of a Rhino. A wave of warp stench made my bowels shrivel. Fractal patterns were constantly moving and twisting on the porters' skin that gleamed like liquid metal, dismal daemonic sentience stirred inside as it sensed a psyker, barely contained by the runes on the chains that bound the daemonhost servants to the palanquin. Even a glimpse of the sigils echoed with pain in the chest.

The daemonhosts lowered the palanquin, and a side curtain rose by itself. As I put my boot on the steps, a faint spark of a captive soul twinkled through the tangle of spells. I flinched staring at the frozen daemonhost. Slaves like late Lucia's undead sailors. Prisoners of war or less lucky customers? A terminator guard gave me a nudge, and I climbed up to the shady bowels of the carriage scented with unknown bittersweet spices. Te Kahurangi was sitting beside Tyberos, his eyes closed as he was weaving a net of protective charms around us.

'For those who visit us for the first time,' said the agent. 'Noblemen never abase themselves walking the roadways on foot. Prestige is worth the cost. Those who refuse to pay to the local coachmen and guides will have to struggle with the ever-changing maze of Oldshadow's streets.'

I pulled aside the curtain as the palanquin left the landing area to the lower districts. The avenue wound down under impossible angles between dense lines of buildings. Obsidian walls didn't reflect the light of warpflame lanterns rocking under the roofs in the aether wind, the glow of low clouds didn't reach the ground. Rows of lanterns cast cold unlight of indigo and purple that couldn't disperse the darkness creeping out of unlit sidestreets, only making their inky murk deeper. Shutters on narrow windows were sealed, some houses didn't have windows at all. Sometimes another palanquin or carriage drawn by daemons or warp beasts passed by. A pedestrian showed up from a low gate in a solid wall with crates in both hands and hobbled along the road like a drunkard. When our palanquin passed by, I suppressed a bout of sickness. It was a catatonic Eldar with crude seams on his arms and chest and seer stones in the place of his eyes.

The agent caught my glance and gave out a coughing laugh again. 'Just a debt slave, lady. Denizens of this district are not too rich to forgive debts. But they can offer honest customers many whimsical pleasures in the secret gardens behind these walls.'

Aphedron smirked. 'That's where we drop by on the way back.'

'We do not have time for slacking,' Tyberos grunted. 'Sorry, venerable agent. We are here for the repairs and nothing more.'

'Mages would be delighted to bargain for precious relics your Chapter is famous for, Lord Reaper,' said the agent. 'It will not only cover the repair expenses but give you significant profit.'

Only Imudon sat immobile with his helmet on, blending with the Sharks in his grey armour. The curtain by his side remained closed, he didn't react to the talks. I reached out to touch his shoulder but he didn't move.

The palanquin stopped. Psychic unrest in the background was growing stronger. The agent bowed his head and closed his eyes entering the seer trance. After a few seconds of absolute silence he bowed again.

'I am sorry, Lord Reaper. We have arrived to a crossroads at the same time as the loftiest guest of Oldshadow. The Eleventh Lord.' He spoke the last words in a solemn whisper.

'Who's that?' Panaque whispered back before the Sharks could hush him.

'One of the wealthiest and mightiest nobles of the Empire-That-Was who has outlived all his peers. He used to reign over hundreds of planets, thousands of subjects, trillions of slaves and hosts of daemons. He had lost much wealth after the Great Defeat but acquired sorcerous power unrivalled among our entire race. Maybe you have seen the Aeldari craftworld he has conquered and bound to his will,' he said with obvious gloating over the loss of his kind's sworn enemies.

I stuck out of the palanquin. An avenue even wider than the one we rode along crossed our way. Sleek towers with glowing oriels stood on four sides of the crossroads, connected with arched galleries. A long procession of slaves was marching slowly through stripes and circles of indigo unlight. Scions of different races shackled in the same rune-engraved chains, they moved on and on, hundreds and hundreds. Aeldari and Yu'vath, Loxatl and Sslyth, carrying strange weapons and banners with occult symbols I didn't know. Then a fully black palanquin with crimson seer stones on its pointed crest and carved ebony rails emerged from behind the towers, hauled by hulking horned daemons in black and white bisected livery. Instead of link servants living torches of daemonhosts ablaze with blue warpfire floated before the daemonic porters. When it reached the middle of the avenue, the procession stopped as well.

The agent prepared to say something but the curtains of the black palanquin slid aside. A female Yu'vath with witch-charms hanging from her neck and belt crawled out and headed towards us.

'The Eleventh Lord has turned his attention towards us,' the agent whispered. 'Pray your thoughts and words have not provoked his wrath.'

Only then I realized I had forgotten about the psyker litanies of protection. The damn shard's influence. I frowned recalling the words but the messenger came in. Her eyes glimmered with warp light through the headdress of black metal net with crimson gems that covered her hairless head down to her mouth.

She got down to one knee in the center of the carriage. 'Lord Reaper, His Noble Ascendancy asks you whether you sell your psyker serfs.'

Tyberos turned his head to me. 'She is a hostage, not a serf.'

All of a sudden another husky, deep voice spoke from the messenger's mouth. 'Do you know why I am asking, Lord Reaper?'

'That is none of my business.'

'So it is up to you to deal with the issues. They are galore indeed in our times.'

The guess flashed in my mind. I leapt to my feet and pushed away Tyberos' outstretched claw. 'I would be glad to talk to Your Ascendancy if he knows more about the thing.'

'Come in to talk eye to eye,' the sinister voice answered. 'The human warlord will not object.'

'What do you want from the alien warlock, Inquisitor?' Tyberos lay his claws on my shoulder.

I stepped forward to the messenger. 'My lord, I serve the Ordo even in your captivity. I must not abandon the cases I am working on.'

'I will see you to His Noble Ascendancy, lady,' the messenger crooned in her own voice. 'No harm will be done to you if you show His Ascendancy due respect and admiration.'

Imudon suddenly grabbed me by the arm when I prepared to jump out of the palanquin. 'I'm going with you.'

The messenger shook her head. 'His Ascendancy has not invited any others.'

'He should remember Imudon, the Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers, and our ties of mutual gratitude.'

'Fine,' the Eleventh Lord's voice croaked. 'I will send a sedan chair for you.'

Two smaller daemons carried the sedan to our palanquin so Imudon stepped right in and seated me next to himself under the black silken canopy.

I pressed my shoulder against his armoured side. 'I'll feel braver along with you.'

'It has been rash,' he said. 'Even people of great recklessness think thrice before appealing to this mage lord.'

'He will tell me what Fluffster is hiding.'

'Hiding for your own good.'

'One can lift the curse only when its true nature is known. I have to outsmart the Dark Apostle bastard to win.'

The sedan chair stopped level with the Eleventh Lord's palanquin. The curtain slid by itself letting us in, the messenger who had followed us on foot slipped in behind us without a sound. Blobs of indigo fire danced around us, showing the way between rows of kneeling slaves. The aura of the strongest psyker I'd ever encountered bound me like invisible fetters, choked my breath out of my throat.

On a dais under a smaller canopy with red shimmering spirals a withered ancient Yu'vath sat on a throne of adamantium and wraithbone. The hood of his embroidered cloak of black and purple was folded over his forehead revealing a plain obsidian crown. He lowered both skeletal hands, and a glint of warpfire fell on his chest.

Under a gorget of dark gold the fabric of his opulent robes had been slit from the collarbone down to the solar plexus over a raw wound. His naked heart was pulsing between the edges of pallid flesh covered in clotted blue blood. I looked down at the carpet away from the gruesome sight.

A censer floated out from the dark, and a sulphurous note of the Chaos shrine and the Librarium shard added in to the thick scent of spices. Leaning on Imudon's arm, I made a few steps forward.

The eyes of distorted faces carved into the dais lit up. 'Bend the knee to His Ascendancy, hostage,' their eerie voices hissed inside my head.

'She shouldn't,' Imudon said at once.

'The grieving widower has taken a mate,' the Eleventh Lord croaked from under the canopy. 'For me, this is a matter of distant past. Fine, let her ask her question.'

I bowed my head politely. 'Lord, you are aware of the mark I am bearing. Please tell me your price so that I could hear more about it.'

His lipless sunken mouth moved. 'I doubt you can afford my prices. Marks used to be of some value until now when marked idiots are wandering around in numbers. Especially when some start losing their blessings, like the beast-king of Black Legion raiders.' There was no other person called like that. But even more shocking was the hidden astonishment in his tone when he mentioned the Panther.

'Lost?' I gasped.

'I was the first,' Imudon answered calmly.

'I sympathize with your miserable fall from grace,' said the Eleventh Lord.

'There's no need for that. I've returned the only grace that matters.'

'You have been to the decrepit Palace of Terra, by the throne of its decaying Sovereign. The one who came to my realm to return his worthless son I had bent and broken. I kept His dear youngest child chained at the dais of my throne so that the ragtag peoples of the Halo saw my true might. He wounded me and warned me that my sins would be the death of me. But I am still alive and my power is waxing while the Lord of Serpents, no more a cheeky youth but an eyeless walking mummy, fell in battle, killed by his own brother. My injury does not heal but the one who dealt this blow got a worse wound by His beloved son's hand. I am alive but He's a corpse, a corpse laid down inside a forfeit mausoleum of that ruined palace!'

A hysterical laugh came out of his throat. His entire body shivered in crazed laughter until the heart throbbed, and blood gushed from the wound. His agony set my soul on fire. I cried out, tears running down my face. Slaves hurried to their master from the corners of the palanquin.

'Get lost, you all! Begone! Begone!' the Eleventh Lord wheezed out and fell back on the pillows.

Imudon picked me up and jumped out without farewell. Waves of searing pain still shook me as he walked back to our palanquin carrying me on his shoulder.

Tyberos frowned when he saw us coming on foot but said nothing. I curled up on my seat, and even Panaque didn't dare to ask us questions. Only half an hour later I came back to my senses and sat up to look out at the streets.

The palanquin had reached the trading districts where endless rows of shops occupied both sides of the avenue. Trees and flowers didn't grow in the streets but owners of bigger shops decorated their porches with fountains of spectral fire or crystal bushes. Unlike other marketplaces I'd been to, windows and doors were shut. Only painted signs advertised their goods to passers-by. Some shops had slaves or animated statues to demonstrate colourful warp images. In galleries of upper floors guests in dark veils and hoods lounged on couches behind latticework screens.

On a big crossroads the palanquin stopped to give way to another flashy procession. Right along our side was an enormous window with sparkling vials of many colours painted on the shutters. A bored promoter was walking back and forth between whimsically sculpted stairways. I would have called him a space marine but for a pair of long horns curled over his silvery head and the grotesque curves of his androgynous figure. The promoter blew a kiss to me when he noticed I was watching him, and thin golden chains and pendants fixed to countless piercing rings all over his body gave out a loud tinkle.

'Come to taste the finest aphrodisiacs and choose among the strongest poisons, sweetest lady!' he purred.

'Another one of our poor legion's Apothecarion decided to change his occupation,' Aphedron grunted when he saw the promoter. 'He's grown even larger boobs than the Lubricious. Get off our way, Malovum, or I'll break you asunder!' Upon hearing his long forgotten name, the marine hissed in anger and leaped back into the smoky darkness of the shop.

The avenue ended in a vast square with a petrol-black lake as large as a whole district. Unnaturally bent bridges ran over the dark waves to a rocky island in the center of the lake where slender towers seemed to grow out of the blackstone solid, their summits so tall they disappeared in the clouds. Litters were slowly moving in long lines, and the agent ordered the porters to join the queue heading to the leftmost tower.

It took more than a standard hour just to cross the lake and get out in a chilly inner gallery. Horned brutes with crystal spears in their clawed hands surrounded us, sniffing the air. Fire burst out of their empty eye sockets and drooling maws as daemons bound within their bodies were probing our minds. Panaque recoiled when a possessed guard reached for him, and only smiled again when a shaded stairway took us to a balcony with small tables and piles of pillows.

'Lord Reaper, the Masters of the Docks are waiting for you and your mage.' The agent pointed at a locked door in the end of the balcony. 'Your companions and guards will have to wait here. We will be glad to provide refreshments for them as a compliment to your order.'

The purple light of floating lanterns gave the seemingly cozy place an uncanny air. When Tyberos and Te Kahurangi left, two Aeldari servants brought trays with neatly arranged sweets and glass jars of dark blue wine. Panaque stuffed a handful of black lozenges into his mouth and chewed them with a puzzled face.

'A mix of licorice and fire pepper,' he said when he finally overcame the sweets. 'Try some, ma'am.'

I took a thin glass from the table, and one of the Aeldari poured me wine. So bitter my throat spasmed at the first sip, it reeked of spices and burnt rubber. I looked out at the lake with the glass in hand while Panaque and Aphedron were struggling with the alien sweets. Even with their combined appetite, the sweets were winning.

'Unusually quiet for a marketplace,' I told the agent who was watching the two as if counting the sweets they devoured. 'On human planets, goods are presented on open stalls, and customers are chattering and joking with salesmen.'

'There are markets of this kind in the Undercity,' he said. 'But it is a filthy place. I strongly recommend you to avoid it. All kinds of scum like outlaws and escaped slaves brawl and bargain in perpetual darkness where forbidden cults flourish for centuries and no rule of hospitality is sacred.'

I recalled the primarch he had mentioned. Not the Night Haunter, probably not Angron sometimes counted among the Chapter's progenitors. 'I bet the Crowfather enjoyed it.'

'It was the only part of the city he frequented.'

Another agent, a Yu'vath woman in rich robes, escorted the Shark leaders out of the Masters' chamber. 'Lords.' She pressed both hands to her chest. 'I am sincerely glad that we have agreed on the prices. Your claim has been accepted by Chieftain Flamewing. If you win the duel, he is obliged to pay the full cost.'

The wine had made me drowsy, and I spent the long way to the arena napping in my corner of the palanquin. My head ached at the constant psychic buzz, even the pills were of little help. During another tedious ceremony before an arched entrance to the monumental Court Hall the agent presented Tyberos to four Yu'vath in similar cloaks with hoods pulled over their faces.

'My lord, your adversary is already on the arena,' one of the hosts announced with a bland voice. 'We swear to arbitrate without prejudice. With magic or without?'

'Without.'

Unlike most of the local public places, the duel arena was a relatively small chamber with a circle inscribed with sorcerous wards in the middle. Four places under the vault were reserved for the judges. We stopped before the open door as two of the judges entered the chamber.

'You are allowed to take in no more than two seconds,' said the judge. 'Your weapons will be taken away until the end of the duel. 'You have the right to delegate the fighting to any of your chosen seconds.'

'No need,' bellowed Tyberos. He took off his chainfists and bolter and handed them to another judge. At his sign Te Kahurangi and the senior terminator followed him in. From the opposite door appeared a giant butterfly with unfurled wings that shimmered with all shades of red and bronze. His slender body was clad in a suit of adamantium power armour, and a protective field sparkled around his head and wings. He removed the helmet as he came in, revealing an insectoid snout with curled antennae and large bulbous eyes. Two other butterflies, one with grey wings and one green, headed to the corner seats on his side.

Both adversaries exchanged ritual greetings. Tyberos bared his head as well and stepped towards Chieftain Flamewing, the hulking Chapter Master's crown only level with the Papalotl's midriff. The judges clapped their hands in synchrony. The adversaries rushed forward with lightning speed and grappled. Joints of Tyberos' armour screeched as Flamewing squeezed it with all four upper limbs.

The agent slammed the door shut. 'I am sorry but it is not allowed to watch over duels of honour. They will come out once the duel ends, they discuss the conditions of their mutual agreement and make peace at a ceremonial banquet.'

I sighed heading to a waiting room with all the company to see tables set with the same unholy combo of rubber wine and peppered candies.

'I won't ever complain about Imperial bureaucracy. This is a place that takes the idea of slowness to a new level,' I whispered to Panaque when the agent turned away to answer Aphedron's question.

'Maybe we could take a walk around the market with our marines. It's fun to enter shops pretending we're important customers and tasting all their goods.'

I plucked up my courage to suggest what I had been pondering on since I had had to leave the warlock's black palanquin. 'Got an idea. But without the marines. The Eleventh Lord is somewhere here, and he will enlighten me for a good price.'

'Your reserve account?'

'Something better.' I was sure the daemonic guards of the place were recording every word spoken within these walls but if they didn't interfere, we hadn't violated any laws yet.

I got up, and the agent hurried to me. 'Venerable agent, I feel dizzy in the room. May I take the air in the company of my Interrogator?'

'Sure, lady, but I beg you, do not go away from the entrance. Only slaves walk the streets by foot. You can be mistaken for a servant. Or much worse, for an outlaw.'

Before any of the marines could object, I rushed down the staircases, stealing between Aeldari corsairs, Ork freebootaz and Yu'vath mages. On the high porch I stopped to recuperate squinting at two possessed guards walking past the front steps. After a moment of doubt I turned off both my vox and my dataslate. Panaque jumped down to the pavement and waved his hand.

'Now quicker! Do you know where to go, ma'am?'

'That's what the psyker-sight is for.' I put my hand in the pouch and found the shard. Energy streamed into my mind, and I closed my eyes concentrating on the target. First nothing happened but a sting of pain burnt the place of the mark. Then a faint crimson fire flickered far away through the lacework of sorcery that entangled Oldshadow.

We ran off along the vertiginous maze of streets and avenues. Outside the palanquin the city hurt to look at, twisting in impossible directions so that the further we moved, the more distant was the goal. Steep stairways spiralling deep into the darker lower levels suddenly ended on top of hills basked in the unlight of the clouds. I concentrated all meagre psychic powers on the goal, and little by little the flame got closer.

A long twisting tunnel crowded by slaves with packages and baskets led us to a crossroads of seven big streets in the market district. I recognized the corner of the potion shop we had stopped by on the way to the island. Once we turned the corner, the suave promoter blocked our way simmering and beckoning.

'Sweet youths all alone in the streets. Come with me to my nice lounge in the House of the Smoking Vial.'

'Get back to work, fellow.' I waved my hand as always with sticky shop promoters.

Suddenly his arms extended like mechandendrites and grabbed us by the collars. 'You're walking on foot but aren't slaves, you're ordering around but aren't guests. Anyone here has the right to claim outlaws.'

Steel fingers squeezed the back of my neck, my feet got off the ground. A long serpentine tongue lashed out of the ex-marine's mouth and slipped down my cheek, leaving a trail of burning saliva. 'Come with me, sweet youths. If you please me well, I won't make you suffer for too long. Be so kind not to make use of your weapons. Assaulting a rich merchant's private property means a worse death.'

'Your masters will kick your butt for slacking,' Panaque shouted punching at the hand that gripped his throat.

'I'm the favourite parasite of the Poison Mistress, allowed to enter her bedroom.' The promoter licked his full lips. 'She buys expensive Drukhari Lhamaeans to reward me and lets me have fun with her debtors.' Carriages and slaves passed by paying no attention to the scene. 'My workday for today is almost over, youths, and I have a few hours to play with you before the Mistress summons me to her chambers.'

I kicked him in the ribs. 'Hey, you fag. Aphedron the Magnificent - do you recognise this name, Malovum? He'll arrive here searching for us and will fulfill his promise to tear you asunder.'

The promoter screwed up his face. His grip loosened. 'To hell with him and you both. Begone or I'll call the guards.'

We flopped down on the pavement. I got up shaking dust off my coat, Panaque sat up and rubbed his shoulder with a grimace. Before we could dive into an underground gallery, two possessed guards walked out of a sidestreet and pointed their spears at us. An invisible net of magic ensnared me so tightly my breath stopped.

'There was a scandal at the Smoking Vial. You bear no slave marks,' a daemonic voice hissed inside my mind. 'Your name is not on the list of guests.'

'We're in the retinue of Shade Lord Tyberos, also known as Lord Reaper of the Void.'

The possessed guard grinned, and a heatwave from his flaming maw hit my face. 'Do you have anything to bail yourselves out? Lord Tyberos will not find you in the Undercity.'

I cussed fumbling in my pouch with stiff fingers to find my bank chip. A sharp edge of the shard cut across my palm. A surge of horrible might shocked me, and I felt the spell threads pop one by one. I clutched the shard and shook the clenched fist before the guard's muzzle.

'Let us pass, filthy scum!' I roared, surprised by the power of Will in my own voice.

The guards recoiled, smoke belched out of their maws. We darted into the gallery while they were gaping, their tongues stuck out between their tusks. Only when we ran under the endless row of shady arches to the far edge of the shopping district, we stopped to have a respite on a smaller plaza with a fountain of purple fire. Panaque sat down on the railing of the fountain, watching servants going out of shops with baskets of strange fruit.

'Let's try this,' he said sadly. 'We'll say we're buying snacks for Lord Tyberos.'

I frowned. 'I'm sure they taste as foul as the refreshments in the halls.'

'How far is your warlock?'

'His soulfire is somewhere here. I can sense his presence even without the shard.'

He smiled broadly. 'You may leave everything to me, ma'am. I know how to deal with grumpy fellows.'

The Eleventh Lord's soul, now bright as a mighty blaze, radiated from the backyards like a beacon. Something horrible stirred in the impenetrable murk of the sidestreet but I put out my fist with the shard, grabbed Panaque by the arm, and we sneaked through with our eyes closed.

'It's clear you served with Ordo Xenos,' I chuckled when we plunged out on the other side under the glowing skies. 'You take this hellhole as easy as a country market.'

'All humanoids are assholes in the same familiar manner, ma'am.'

'Even humans?' I said and chuckled.

'I didn't say that, ma'am Inquisitor of Ordo Hereticus.'

The backyard was empty and quiet. I felt the souls of the house dwellers glimmer behind solid shutters as we passed by but not a sound came out.

'There.' I looked up at balcony three floors above the pavement. Two gaunt shapes were moving behind the black intricate lattice of the screen.

Panaque winked at me. 'Sir! I'm sorry, just for a minute, sir!'

The screen slid up. The Eleventh Lord gazed upon us from a decorated throne, a glass of wine at his pale lips. On a throne next to him sat a Yu'vath woman in opulent robes of jet-black with an overall pattern of crimson runes. A black veil with hundreds of flickering maroon crystals covered her face and upper chest. Like wisps in the shrine, I thought all of a sudden.

Panaque bowed. 'Have a nice evening, good lord. It won't take much time. Lady Inquisitor wants to offer you a fantastic trade.'

'So?' the Eleventh Lord grunted, his other hand on the wound.

I shivered under his companion's freezing psychic stare. 'Sorry to distract you from the matters of distant past, Your Ascendancy. I'm ready to give the rarest relic I've ever wielded for an honest answer. What is the mark and its power and how is it related to the mysterious gaoler feared even by ancient crypteks?'

His companion gave out a laugh. She raised her bony hand and lifted her veil.


	31. Episode 4 Chapter 6

Her pallid face remained shaded though a fiery sphere hung right above. I blinked at the fire, and for a second the alien woman's skeletal features dissolved into an impossible visage I knew too well. Crimson sparks flashed in her rounded eyes when she spoke to me in an unmistakably familiar tone.

'You will know when the time is right.' The black veil slipped back over her face.

The Eleventh Lord's psychic power came down on me like an avalanche. I staggered and bumped into Panaque who had frozen up, his face distorted by terror. In a desperate attempt I threw up my fist, summoning the shard's magic. Power. The only power. It clashed with the suppressing aura, a blaze of crimson fire swallowed everything in my psyker-sight and went out in a shower of sparks. The veiled lady with my nemesis' likeness and voice giggled exactly like he had done in the shrine.

The Eleventh Lord put his glass on the armrest and got up to his feet. 'Squalid human, do you hope to intimidate me with a bauble I have in hundreds in the storages of my craftworld?'

My mind was empty. All thoughts and words had vanished with the blaze. I stood staring at him, blood pulsing in my lacerated palm.

'You both have insulted me before my honoured guest. Before the city. Filthy scum starts talking to me, a noble lord of the Old Empire, as if I am their equal. You have arrived to me alone, and I have the right to claim you, according to the ancient laws still revered here.'

'Hey, sir, let's make that out,' Panaque finally found strength to talk. 'Maybe we'll just call up Lord Tyberos.'

'Shut up.' The Eleventh Lord snapped his fingers, and Panaque grabbed for his own throat choking. 'Each of you will get a seer stone brand and a hundred lashes for irreverence aboard the craftworld.'

His power threw us to the ground. We lay paralyzed as the pavement shook under heavy steps. Shadows fell over us, and a clawed hand lifted me off ground by the neck. Limp as a rag doll, I could barely breathe as the daemon guard dragged me up a dark stairway. It pushed a heavy door and dumped me down on the carpet between the thrones. Panaque flopped next to me, blood running from his shut eyes.

The veiled lady was still giggling as if delighted by the scene. She poked me in the ribs with her boot sole and spoke to the Eleventh Lord in High Gothic.

'Where the mark is, the sign can be.' Intended more for my ears than for her companion. Lucia had mentioned the sign once, an eternity ago. Many had the mark, few got the sign. They took their vows, never to be seen again. So many Chaos adepts mutilated, raped, deceived, killed one another under the red skies of the daemon world to get the ultimate blessing of their masters.

'It will be a great honour for my court.'

'If she agrees.'

'She shall. My will is the law for my servants and slaves,' he grunted as if vexed by the very sounds of the language alien to him.

'The boy also deserves the mark. One day I might ransom them if you don't object.'

He answered in his own tongue. As they were murmuring and sipping on their wine, I stared pointlessly at the deserted backyard through the lattice. My hand cramped up, squeezing the shard's sharp edges deeper into my flesh. Glistening droplets of blood leaked between my fingers onto the carpet, black on black.

The talk ceased. I sensed movements at the edge of my psychic sight. Then a carriage of red brocade and dark bronze rolled out of the sidestreet, drawn by three Khymerae. The spectral felines bared their fangs and flapped their upper limbs when the carriage stopped before the balcony.

'The cinders of your former grandeur, Imudon the Banished,' said the veiled lady, and my heart leapt.

'Execute your power on some other clay puppet of yours, tyrant. I have more than one way to disrupt your foul game,' Imudon's voice spoke from behind the closed curtains.

'You are late, priest,' the Eleventh Lord hissed. 'Your companion has no legal status in Oldshadow, as well as the boy. When I register them as my slaves, you will not protest. Neither will the Lord Reaper of the Void. You might challenge me on the Arena but you will lose to my champion for sure.'

'We have had many deals, most of them too fishy for even a nest of vipers like Oldshadow. Your counteragents of past and present would be glad to find out a few I interesting facts about you and your craftworld.'

'Will they trust the Banished?'

'You call me so, not them. They fear me, and this fright reigns over the prospect of profit.'

The Eleventh Lord stamped his foot. 'I wish your superiors had shot you down when they found you in the shrine.'

'Please do not be upset,' said the veiled lady. 'Your paths will cross again, more than once.'

The Eleventh Lord slapped on the armrest. The paralyzing charms dissolved. 'You two, begone, worthless puppets. I will never have use for you two piles of rubbish.'

I came back to my senses only in the yard when Imudon pulled me and Panaque into the carriage. The shard slipped out of my swollen hand to the carriage floor.

'Don't tell Tyberos,' I said looking down at my boots. 'I've stolen it from the Sharks.'

Imudon frowned. 'I'd tell you to get rid of it but now this piece of shit will stick to you like the cursed grimoire of Corydoras and Plodia.'

Panaque stretched his arms and rubbed his neck. 'Are the Sharks too cross with us?'

'Lord Tyberos is still busy with the formalities. Don't make him angry, the victory has been no easy thing.'

'You had quite a colourful life before that very day,' I said. 'Half of the most notorious heretics and xenos are your acquaintances.'

Imudon's face got even gloomier. 'The part of my life I prefer not to recall. Even worse to use.'

I took a deep breath. 'Well, hope this time you'll be honest about this. I can swear it was the Dark Apostle, your former First Acolyte sitting next to the old warlock. What the heck?'

'This entity has many guises but none of them is its real shape. Not another word.'

Panaque opened the curtain. 'It's a shame we have to tag along with Tyberos in a city of wonders. I should go back to Ordo Xenos to get paid for fancy trips.'

'Dangerous wonders,' said Imudon. 'They need millions of souls to power the reactors of Oldshadow, to toil in its countless workshops, gardens, markets. Humans are sold into slavery quite rarer than a couple millennia ago though.'

'The Angevin Crusade,' Panaque said proudly.

'The Yu'vath lost their Old Empire much earlier. They had walked a middle path between passions of flesh and lust for power without succumbing to temptations to the degree of the Aeldari. Once they used to be a young ambitious race like modern Tau and now still struggle on. Some may call that heretical but they are worth attention and interest.'

Imudon finished the phrase abruptly and turned to the curtain. I didn't dare to continue the talk. The rest of the way back passed in silence. Shop signs and windows flashed by as the Khymerae were galloping along the avenues of the market district. The carriage crossed the square past the Smoking Vial where a Lhamaean with crystal blades in her hair was strolling before the stairways instead of Malovum.

'Where are we going?' Panaque asked, bored by the monotonous ride.

'To the docks,' Imudon said through gritted teeth. 'They're already fixing the barge.'

The carriage vanished in a burst of spectral sparks once we got off in the landing area. Two terminators were standing to attention before our Thunderhawk.

'You have made Lord Tyberos wait,' one of them grunted on seeing us. 'Board the craft immediately.'

Tyberos himself was marching to and fro across the main compartment, bellowing orders into the vox. His armour was battered and cracked like he had been under a car crusher. He ignored us as we passed by, and, honestly, for the better.

In the back compartment Aphedron greeted us with his optimistic grin, but once Panaque started the story of our failed trade, Te Kahurangi's psychic glance swept over us as a chilly breeze.

I hid both hands under the shawl. 'On board.'

'They'll lock you in again,' said Aphedron.

'You'll be pleased to know we scared the crap out of Malovum with just your name.'

He screwed his eyes. 'Good. The chase for perfection, isn't it? The one that makes the Phoenician's sons go off limits. Had to learn it in the hard way.'

The barge was buzzing with excitement so the grey halls felt truly alive for the first time. Serfs talked to one another loudly, and the many names of the Maelstrom were heard everywhere from the docks to the bridge. Repair brigades from Oldshadow were working in the bowels of the barge but even the presence of xenos didn't seem to bother the Sharks and their retinue.

Fluffster met us in the corridor that led to Tyberos' private quarters. Dressed in a new robe of vivid red, he opened his paws when I waved both hands.

'It's been an eternity, Fluffster,' I said hugging him. 'I'll go with you, no matter what the old shark growls. You have to tell me much about Oldshadow.'

'You'll see Uncle, Sister and Angel soon, Volentia. Lord Tyberos calls all dwellers to a feast once the repairs are over.'

'I'll grab fresh clothes and run down to your compartment.'

'I'm going to have a peek at the work with Panaque. See you.'

For the rest of the day I was browsing the Librarium archives through the ship network, trying to find out more on the Yu'vath. There was even a short biography of the Eleventh Lord that revealed less than he had told himself. Strangely, the entity known as 'gaoler' wasn't even mentioned anywhere. Or I needed a higher level of access, I thought with irritation. Once on Uebotia, I'll ask Lord Corydoras and Lady Interpunctella to send a request to the Segmentum Archives or even to Holy Terra.

The signal from the Chapter Master came early in the morning. I put on the newest and best clothes I had and found the old makeup kit I had bought for the Hog'n'Shroom visit. The lipstick had dried and lost its colour but the eyeshadows were perfectly fine. I smiled to my reflection in the small mirror. The days when Aphedron was a foe and Angel a shy distressed boy from a golden cage. It was a shame I hadn't been to a party with Imudon. If he had visited any, of course. Every person I had known since then were different nowadays. Better people, I'd say but month by month I dreamt more of the past than of any future unlike before.

Surrounded by my crew, I felt warmer as we were going downstairs to the platform by the stream where I had witnessed the rite of welcoming.

'At last something different from their sour routine,' Uncle said watching the decorated serfs take their seats by large bonfire bowls around the edge. 'When the battle began, I thought we'd never get out of this flying mausoleum.'

'No grave but the Void, Tyberos said proudly,' I chuckled.

'Lassie, it's not the thing to recall at a feast. I'm looking forward to driving the owl on solid ground.'

'Don't be cross but I asked the Sharks to take us to the Maelstrom.'

He frowned. 'Have pity for my poor heart. We're heading to Uebotia after the big fellows beat the Pirate King.'

'Fluffster has received a letter from Canoness Hyacintha,' Sister said. 'They've reached the Cadian sector.'

'Can't believe they've fixed the ship so quickly,' I told Fluffster.

'The xenos brigades only delivered the necessary parts and oversaw the repairs of the energy systems. The rest is up to us to finish.'

Angel brought the rear talking to Aphedron and Imudon. Strange bondings occur in Inquisitorial retinues but I hadn't expected him putting up with the Dreadful Heretical Past so quickly.

I washed my hands and walked after Fluffster to a place of honour reserved for guests, exchanging greetings with senior serfs on the way.

Militiamen from the serf auxiliary opened the gate opposite the Librarium. The platform shook under the feet of a hundred warriors marching on the metal polished by millennia of solemn gatherings. Led by Tyberos himself, the company warriors wore no armour but carried their weapons. Dark tattoos crossed with battle-scars covered their greyish skin. The oldest Void Brothers with black avian eyes had their faces fully tattooed. Woven loincloths were their only garments, sergeants and marines of special rank had feather cloaks buckled across their chests. Most had their ashen hair tied in tall topknots and decorated with bone combs or feathers. Tyberos stopped in the middle of the platform, purple and blue glints shifting on his glossy black cloak in the warm light of the bonfires. He spoke to the gathered crowd in their tongue, and they clapped their hands and cheered.

'There'll be a war dance,' Fluffster whispered to me. 'Then they'll don back their armour to preside over a feast in the dining hall. The ancient rites before going to sleep.'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'Lord Tyberos promised he wouldn't sleep until Lord Mentor picks us up.'

Fluffster put his paw to his mouth. Incense smoke was rising to the vaults from the censers. The cheers fell silent once Tyberos started chanting. The marines lined up moving in perfect synchrony. Their voices answered the Chapter Master's mighty bass as two hundred feet stamped on the floor at once. The chant thundered around, faster and faster. Heady with battle excitement, they clapped their hands against their chests, poked out their tongues. Taphius repeated the fierce movements beside a few fellow initiates in the back line, his eyes shining. Unseen in cloistered Chapters, their fierce vigour captivated me so I froze up, my eyes locked on the very embodiment of the Emperor's power unrivalled even in the outer dark.

'Ka mate, ka mate!' Tyberos bellowed the refrain.

'Ka ora, ka ora!' the company chanted back.

Their faces contorted in grimaces of battle wrath, they banged the poles of their spears against the floor. A joint battlecry swept over the hall like a squall.

'This means, may we live or may we die,' Fluffster said when the dance ended. 'A song ancient beyond even their old legions' memories.'

'Fearsomeness impossible in our well-behaved Imperium,' I dared to say it openly.

'That's why I'm sure you'll enjoy the company of the two bruisers.'

The serfs performed a dance of their own to celebrate the beginning void-crusade. Fluffster said we had the right for our own dance as the guests of the Chapter but I felt shy to vie with their honed skills. The marines headed to the armoury for the secluded rites of appeasing the Machine Spirits and donning the blessed armour. Smells of freshly cooked food wafted through the open gate from the dining hall. Serfs were moving around in small groups, stopping to chatter. Normally, crews enlisted to different part of the barge didn't have much time to mingle but the big gatherings let them get acquainted, meet distant relatives and exchange news.

They cheered again at the sight of the warriors returning in their full splendid panoply. We joined the queue to the dining hall but Taphius went out of the line and walked up to me.

'Lady Inquisitor,' he said in the most official tone, 'you are a matakite blessed by the Void Father, without a trail of heresy. Imperial seers rarely pay us visits so the Shade Lord and the Chief Librarian ask you to assist them in the last preparation rite in the Librarium.'

'I'm a weak psyker, you know,' I said.

'The joint power of the Librarians will show you the way.'

'All will be angry for postponing their meal,' I chuckled.

Te Kahurangi leaned over and pressed his nose against mine when I came closer. 'We haven't had seers touched by the Void Father do niu divination for more than a century. Most despise this as a superstition but the custom is sacred to us.'

I whispered a litany of protection. Luckily he was busy with his own mind-routine and didn't try to read my mind as my heart fluttered at a mess of unwanted thoughts. The mark, the lack of soulbinding. If I don't panic about that, it'll go smoothly. I bit my lip and took a breath before the threshold of the Librarium.

Taphius took a sealed case from a shelf while the Librarians were lining up before the star-strewn oculus. Tyberos' terminators stood on guard on both sides of the closed doors, the Chapter Master himself stopped in the passage between rows of cases.

'Please sit down here between the Shade Lord and the choir.' Taphius took a bunch of twigs from the case and put them on the floor before me. 'When they start chanting, concentrate on the rakau and glimpse into the futures to come.'

'Listen well, Inquisitor,' said Te Kahurangi. 'This is the song of the cicada who retreats to the dark of deep caves when the sun sets but is ready to emerge to bathe in its radiance once it rises again.'

I closed my eyes and let the haunting melody carry me away. Their auras rolled over me as crushing waves of the cold sea, and I swam along with them. The blessed twigs flickered before me spinning in the warp currents. I rushed up to the surface where vague images were forming in the glimmering foam.

'Let me in,' a whisper reached my mind. A false note broke the choir's harmony. 'Let me in. Let me in!' The voice sent a wave of pain down my chest and midriff. I saw the shard's sinister crimson gleam far away in my room. 'They don't see me. They don't hear me.'

I answered nothing. A cry of fear choked in my throat seized by an invisible hand. 'Let me in! You're carrying my mark, my blessing. A stolen part of my might hidden in your things. You cannot struggle with me for long.' The twigs were spinning at feverish speed as the pain became unbearable. Entangled in the trance between the material world and the warp, I could only cower while red-hot steel claws were tearing at my trapped soul.

Then the world came down on me. Crushed by a tremendous blow, I sprawled on the floor breathless.

Dead silence. Impenetrable black around. A dull pounding ache in my temples. Something swished over my head but clashed against metal with an ear-splitting clang. A strong hand gripped me by the neck and shook me.

I opened one eye. Tyberos' face looked over me, such fury in his gaze that my heart skipped a beat.

'She must die!' he bellowed. A terminator stood by his side, their spears crossed, and a null field of sickening might lingered all over the Librarium.

'Your Librarians failed to notice the mark!' a familiar bass spoke from under the terminator's helmet, and Tyberos clenched his jaws. 'What if the taint spread through the barge?'

Lord Mentor took off his helmet and threw it down to the floor where my blood had pooled under the scattered twigs. The Librarians leaned against the walls, their limbs shaky, their eyes and noses bleeding after the null shock.

'What will you do with the tainted witch, lord?' said Tyberos.

'Use her in a place of danger. She has not succumbed to the taint yet, that is why I let her live. But if she ever does, I will have to destroy her as I did to any who ever stood in the way of the grand course of events. Nothing personal.'

Tyberos put me on the floor. 'Go away, Inquisitor.' Taphius, pasty white and shivering, still hurried to grab me under my arms so that I didn't fall.

'Let's go,' he whispered into my ear. 'Serfs will carry your belongings to the Raptor Imperialis.'

'Sorry,' I could only mutter.

When we left the Librarium behind, he spoke louder, 'Looks like Lord Mentor was hiding under the terminator guise. I wish I knew for how long. Sure we won't be able to take a nap in the cryo-tanks. He'll set up a direction for us to go, as always. His words are law above everything but the Void Father's will.'

'Have I really offended them?'

'Quite so, I'm afraid. But you're not the first to play tricks, and not the worst one.' He seated me in a shuttle next to Panaque and waved his hand with a crooked smile.

After the owl with all our belongings had been transported to Lord Mentor's trading ship, the crew started getting ready for the departure. The ship cogitators showed a three-day route to Pholiotina where this story would come to an end.

While dining with my friends for the first time in a few weeks, I couldn't help but share the most disturbing news about the Panther. I had been preparing for their reaction since the encounter with the Eleventh Lord but the relieved half-smiles Angel and Sister didn't bother to hide brought tears to my eyes.

'You're recovering from the worst in your life,' I said. 'You're ready to withstand a Black Crusade without freaking out. But our great years together mean nothing to you.'

'We will miss you,' Sister said calmly. 'We will be glad to meet you again.'

Angel nodded. 'To fight side by side. We have grown in your company. Our own wards need growth even more. We're not bobblehead acolytes. We're commanders to teach and inspire the young.'

I stuck the fork in the stew. 'Uncle, you're keeping mumb while you should know that Fluffster plans to exile you to a quiet place.'

'I know where,' Panaque said with enthusiasm I didn't like either. 'When we were leaving the barge, he told me I'd go to Inwit after my promotion, with Uncle and the owl.'

'My. Owl.' I stressed the first word but recalled it still belonged to Fluffster. 'Sorry, folks, I need to have a rest after an anti-psychic blow to my brains.'

Until the arrival I seldom left the room, my nerves dangerously close to a breakdown. Cogs in the Terrans' cruel machine, we won't ever be left to do the friggin job, left alone take decisions for ourselves. The Pirate King was going to the dogs much quicker than I had hoped, and I didn't even have time to plan a neat excuse. For the worse, my crew had turned their backs to me in the darkest hour. Right when they finally opened up after years of suffering to show their true strength of soul, they realised they had overgrown their need for me.

The space around Pholiotina was as empty as before, most of trading vessels gone but a newly arrived battle cruiser was anchored in high orbit above the side of Pholiotina opposite to the overgrown Macan Kumbang. First I didn't even recognize the barge, taking it for a hive ship brought out of nowhere by Fleet Tiamet. A foul tumor of reddish flesh well over half, it was twitching and moving its folds and growths as if reaching for the planet surface. The Shadow was so strong here even trained astropaths had lost their connection to the Immaterium, my own psyker-sight was constantly veiled in scarlet haze. The smell of musk prevailed throughout, getting into every room, a constant nauseating background that made me think of unkempt apartments with dozens of pets in a single room.

'The Baleful Eye,' Fluffster said to Lord Mentor staring into the oculus. 'A chance to catch up.'

'Do as you wish. I am taking the our secret assets-friends for the final strike.'

'Tamias has gone nuts,' I gasped on seeing the Stumblebum docked to the Macan Kumbang.

'Traders think the ship is now easy prey to snatch a piece of archeotech or some rare luxury from the now unguarded vaults,' said Fluffster. 'We'll pay Tamias a visit but I insist on taking a shuttle instead of the owl. Relic tools and my volkite gun are a temptation as well.'

The only thing in a relatively sane state around, the Stumblebum met us with a great fuss. Crates of loot were piled in empty compartments, sailors were quarreling over guns and armour pieces. The first mate saw us to our locked rooms.

'Sorry, m'lady, the captain is away to bring a bauble or two from the cursed barge. Even the traitors are so scared they skedaddled to the ground, and the monsters are all stoned, going in circles around the bridge and the reactor.'

I flopped onto my cot, kicked off my boots and lay back under the kindly gaze of Sanguinius from the familiar devotional poster on the opposite wall. A few hours to enjoy the false feeling of my life going back to normal.

Drowse was overcoming me when the wall speakers gave out a beep. I cussed and pressed the 'Reply' button. Tamias, dressed in a space suit, appeared on the screen.

'Welcome back, Lady Inquisitor.' His smile had gone sourer in these weeks. 'Hope you're not too busy. I have urgent news to tell. Please come to the upper platform as soon as possible.'

Chills ran down my spine. The Despoiler himself had yet to arrive to Pholiotina, the cruiser probably belonged to one of his messengers. I only hoped Fluffster would watch over the timing to run away before a Gloriana battleship emerges over the planet. The damn Shadow won't let us scan the planet or catch their movement through the warp.

I ran out without zipping the shoes. Tamias stood on top of a shaky stairway in front of two half-open doors.

I shook his hand. 'That's very important.'

He paused for a second biting his lips. 'You have to understand, m'lady. You have your crew to care about, I have my folks.'

Dazzling energy discharges made me cover my eyes. An impact wave threw me to the platform railing. Something hard and cold touched my head. A Chaos marine clad in tusked Terminator armour in black and gold towered over me with a bolter aimed at my forehead.


	32. Episode 4 Chapter 7

Two more terminators stepped out of the doors, bluish sparks of energy still cracking over their armour. Tamias blinked and pressed both hands to his chest. 'Forgive me, m'lady.'

One of the Chaos marines lifted him by the collar and tore the space helmet off Tamias' belt. 'We don't need you anymore, turncloak. You've served the Inquisition.'

'Kick him out of an airlock,' the second one suggested with a snicker. 'There's air for a few hours in his tanks. We'll block the locks and watch him wriggle in panic over our asshole of a barge.'

Tamias froze up with a grimace of terror. The terminators' laughter echoed through the passages. The first of the two dragged Tamias away. I turned aside and closed my eyes. Though the man had betrayed us, I didn't feel like gloating. What would I have done with my crew at stake?

'So what's next, Mr. Tusk?' I asked the terminator holding me at gunpoint.

He shoved me to the stairway. 'We'll pick up your buddies. A sound, and we'll blow someone's brains out.'

'I've heard the King has problems.'

He yanked my arm. 'Shut up.'

Uncle was the first to see the traitors through the compartment doors. His jaw dropped, he clenched his fists. Sister's face turned deadly pale but she rushed to the door to hug Uncle. Angel stepped forward to shield my crew from the guns pointed at them but Fluffster only shrugged his shoulders.

'If you want her to live, drag your asses outta here,' my captor commanded. 'The Warmaster will be pleased to hear more about the Imperial defenses.'

Angel put his gauntlet on Fluffster's shoulder. 'You should have taken the volkite.'

'It should have happened,' Fluffster whispered back. 'There are more terminators out there.'

Three traitors met us at the exit. They shackled Angel's wrists behind his back, then put Fluffster in fetters. We smaller mortals had to walk under the barrels of their guns with our hands up. Another death threat during a single venture. To my surprise, it already felt more boring than scary.

Huddled together in the middle compartment of a small shuttle, we sat down on the floor staring at the thin line of the course on the wall screen. Our weapons lay in a pile behind the wall under the feet of out captors. The beat-up machinery screeched at every jolt. The terminators were nodding and shaking their heads talking through a private vox channel.

Finally, the shuttle bumped against the rocks with desperate rattling of all its corroded parts. The captors led us out into the thin air of Pholiotina and headed to a large hangar between the camp and the landing area.

The black mountain of the Evernight loomed over rows of vans and tents, over buzzing crowds of serfs and cultists. Its malice was oozing through the Shadow, and the shard in the inner pocket of my pouch started glimmering in the psyker-sight as if soaking up the dreadful power. I felt a burning urge to touch its aura but the aftertaste of the Dark Apostle's last attack made me sick at the very thought.

The captors drove us into the hangar and left us in an unlit corner under the bolters of three assault marines loitering around. The remains of the company had gathered in the back half of the hangar around the Warpsmith's hovering throne as if waiting for a briefing to start.

A shrill wail from the inset speakers of the throne grated my ears. The chattering died out. The Panther himself was coming to his men. I sat up between Angel and Fluffster and clutched my hands together so that they didn't tremble.

Giant shadows fell on the floor. Warriors in even bulkier Terminator suits appeared in the doorway, their black and gold chipped and faded after many battles. My bowels shriveled at a psychic presence of unbearable nastiness coming closer. I wished I could hide in the shadows, crawl away so that it never noticed me. The Panther's better than… Even in my thoughts I didn't dare to recall the Arch-Traitor's name in his proximity.

Two Bringers of Despair, ancient fighters from the depths of the Eye, marched first with cumbersome combi-meltas in hands, human and alien skulls impaled on corroded backpack pikes. Then a warlord of formidable stature entered the hangar, and all marines present lowered to one knee before the dreaded commander of the Black Legion. There hardly were those who had managed to see him that close and survive but every Inquisitor would recognize the image from all Ordo manuals.

A weirdly tall topknot swaying at every step, Abaddon the Despoiler strode between the rows of frozen legionnaires. The Talon of Horus, massive for even his size, gleamed in the lamplight, its golden blades strewn with stains of dried blood. A choir of daemonic voices accompanied him, too strong for the Shadow to muffle. I couldn't see the famous cursed sword behind the wolf pelt hanging from the Despoiler's shoulder but the sword saw me. The wisp inside the shard turned into a blaze once the sword's aura brushed against my soul.

Warriors of lesser might but still fearsome warlords superior to any in the room marched a step behind. One was the Lord Vigilator in his peculiar tall-crested helmet who had spoken to the Warpsmith with the gull sorcerer's assistance, the second was a decorated terminator commander with obsidian tusks growing over the back hood of his suit.

Fluffster jerked forward. The mask of catatonia came off once he saw the traitor leaders. 'Iskandar!' he called out.

His voice was almost a whisper but the Lord Vigilator flinched and got out of step. Another word slipped out of Fluffster's mouth. The Lord Vigilator said something to his boss and headed to us. I pressed myself to Angel's side holding my breath.

'Iskandar, you do remember me.' Fluffster gave his paw to the traitor mage who leaned over to him. They exchanged a few murmured phrases, and the Lord Vigilator nodded.

When the mage hurried to catch up with his fellows, Fluffster gave a sigh of relief. 'Iskandar Khayon, a smart boy from the Fifteenth. Most of your kind don't know who's hiding under the pompous title but I recall the teen from Prospero learning how to wield his power. He'll come back for a serious talk.'

I raised my eyebrows. 'He's one of his most trusted commanders.'

'That's why. Please don't fear and don't ask questions until it's over.'

I stretched my numb legs and rubbed my temples to cope with vertigo. The Despoiler raised the Talon over the bowed heads of the lieutenants beside the Warpsmith's throne. The Warpsmith himself slid down to the floor so as not to tower over their supreme warlord. Glints of fire fell on the floor from behind the spreading mechadendrites, and the Dark Apostle looked out, the meekest of simpers on his lips. Popping up for his own intentions wherever we go. I looked around for the sorcerer but he was nowhere to be seen. A man as cunning wouldn't stay with a doomed employer.

The Despoiler's dramatic voice filled the chamber as he gestured with the Talon in well-staged excitement. 'Noble warriors of the Black Legion! There should be no weaklings or doubters in your proud ranks. The time for the big war has come but your cowardly Captain has wavered. In a bout of contemptible desire to save his own skin he decided to sell you, his loyal men, to the corpse-worshippers. He bargained with the Inquisition that has already killed or captured many of our valiant brethren.'

'As if the Inquisition needs this fat stray cat,' Panaque muttered. 'What a walking thesaurus of an arch-traitor.'

Fluffster patted Panaque's head with his shackled paw. 'Shush. What a brave boy who doesn't fear the Warmaster of Chaos.'

Panaque frowned. 'The Eleventh Lord was way scarier.'

'Listen! I, the Warmaster, the Leader of all the bravest, will give you the greatest goals you have ever aspired of during your long sojourns inside the Eternal Black!' the Despoiler went on rending the air. 'The vision most splendid!'

A sulphur-smelling draught blew into my face. Just a second ago the Dark Apostle had listened to the speech in the Warpsmith's company but the ex-techmarine had vanished and the priest of Chaos was looming over me. Darkness in the corners was getting deeper, pooling into shapes of a blackest black. Shrine shadows split from the walls one by one, red slits flashing on their featureless faces. No one, even the Despoiler himself, paid attention. A supernatural chill pierced me to the very bones. The shadows dragged my friends to the exit, no one of them, even Fluffster, able to move a muscle in the grip of abominations.

'Come with me,' the Dark Apostle crooned pulling me up by the wrist.

'You didn't take us away on Oldshadow.'

'The Banished will not interfere this time.'

In the doorway I took a quick glance of the chamber. The Lord Vigilator was staring at the empty place where my crew had just been. He alone had noticed.

Indifferent cultists kept boozing and fighting while the shadows slipped through the crowd. Uncle tripped on a stone and bumped into a serf who was cleaning a battered Land Speeder but the serf ignored it. The dismal aura of the Evernight was lingering over the edge of the camp, and only legionnaire guards and desperate hereteks could stay in its presence for longer than a few minutes.

Crimson veins on the black hull of the Evernight lit up and shifted their pattern as the Dark Apostle drew a sigil on the surface with his finger. Its fiery contours twisted growing into a portal. The Evernight gave out a hungry gasp.

A shove in the back threw me in on the ice-cold floor. The shadows surrounded me, their spectral limbs tugging my friends by their necks and arms like puppets. Through the shrinking entrance I saw the Dark Apostle's shape lose its contours, only his eyes sickly red on the shaded visage.

'Not long now,' his voice blew through the unlit corridors. 'Prepare for a flight.' The shadows merged with the walls, and my friends collapsed. Limp, barely breathing, they lay in unnatural positions staring into the dark.

Last time, the heart-reactor had been calling for souls. Now, there was absolute silence. Runes glowed on the walls and vaults but gave no light. I found the shard in the pouch and tossed it up. It fell back to my palm, pulsing with warp-flame. The lasting emptiness had sucked all thoughts out of my mind. The whole adventure since Oldshadow had been a single sticky nightmare without a wakeup in sight. Like in a nightmare, the screen of my dataslate was black, eerie symbols flickering in the corner instead of network icons.

I got up with effort. There was time to get to the reactor room and back. If the crazy layout let me, of course. Fluffster growled an indiscernible phrase when I pulled him by the paw but didn't even blink. Fake or real, I had no desire to waste the precious minutes checking it up.

Paths crossed and meandered in the murk. Squeezing the shard, I moved on step by step, fully concentrated on my half-blind psyker vision. There was a faint psychic glow far in the depth of the maze but it had little in common with the heart's searing aura. Probably other captives to feed the ever-hungry daemonic vessel. Together we would do better. I focused on the glow, reaching out with all remaining strength. A pitiful squeak died out at once. I sat down to took a respite before the next attempt.

The glow got brighter. A human soul of such might the combined veil of the Shadow and the Evernight couldn't drown it out. It moved effortlessly through the ship, a lantern in the suffocating darkness. My gaze locked on the beacon, I leapt to my feet and ran forward with shut eyes.

Gauntleted hands caught me. I looked up to the stranger's helmet and pauldrons enveloped in turquoise radiance. The eye lenses of the familiar gull head shone with colourful fire, fire was gushing out of another golden gull head on his staff behind his back.

'A Black Ship crew wouldn't have added you to the list of Astra Telepathica candidates,' the sorcerer said giggling with relaxed serenity of a vacation trip.

I winced. 'At least, I'd go to the Golden Throne to find rest by the Emperor's side.'

'Wow, you've recalled His name for the first time in ages.'

'Well, what are you doing here?'

'Heresy by Imperial standards. That's why a Hereticus operative has just popped up at once. But, counting the origins of my device, someone from Ordo Xenos would fit better.'

'An ex-Xenos acolyte is lying unconscious by the entrance.'

'What a pity, dear. But I didn't know there was an entrance.'

I put my hand on his pauldron. 'I doubt this is ridiculous. The Dark Apostle is going to fly away on board of this abomination.'

'This is ridiculous indeed, a bunch of pathetic misfits struggling with… that monstrous thing. That's why it hasn't killed me on entering the Evernight. The thing is sure I won't dare.'

'You'll tell me what you know about it if we manage to escape.'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'Maybe. The 'if' is what you've nailed.'

'Fluffster tried to talk to the Despoiler's mage called Iskandar. That Iskandar noticed our kidnapping.'

'He was smart indeed even in our years on Prospero. It pissed me off like hell as I was among the worst hopeless morons among the Thousand Sons. Now, I've almost put up with the existence of nerds. He's understood the warnings. Sargon Eregesh, another of Abaddon's close friends, a former Word Bearer, was the first to question the thing in an Astartes' disguise tagging along with the Hand of Destiny, hanging out with warbands here and there. It cost him his sanity.'

He took out a large many-faceted crystal shaped like a speartip covered in a net of thin golden wire. A tiny star of spectral fire was radiating inside, and I covered my eyes so that it didn't burn them out.

'The most expensive thing I've ever bought. I'm not even sure I'll be able to pay the debts.' The sorcerer held it against his breastplate as if it could escape his hand. 'Distant precursors of the modern Aeldari crafted such peculiar things during the War in Heaven when ships like this lurked in every corner of our hapless galaxy. The backlash might kill us but we should try, shouldn't we?'

A beam of light slipped along the corridor showing a pathway. The very sigils on the walls got dim in the proximity of the artifact. The sorcerer gave me his other hand, and we marched forward following the beam shining brighter and brighter as we got closer to the reactor.

Piercing gales blew from the corridors. I gasped and gripped the gauntlet with both hands. Crimson unlight that flooded the chambers before us clashed with the radiance. The heart, grown twice in size since my previous trip to Pholiotina, was pounding before us in a whirlpool of wisps. Psychic frost was growing over my coat and carapace right before my eyes, the air so cold my lungs ached. The Dark Apostle had promised me the ship. If I took the ultimate vow. A vessel greater than the Eleventh Lord's craftworld, built by no human hands. An orphanage girl to take a place among the greatest kings.

'Not the right moment for gaping, dear.' The sorcerer's gauntlet patted me on the back. I flinched and started counting the hieroglyphs on his armour just to get rid of the obsessive images of power.

He left me on the threshold and made a few steps forward with the artifact in his outstretched hands. My cheeks burning with the cold of the Chaos shrine undervaults, I raised my palms slowly and folded them in the sign of the Aquila over my breastplate. My fingers got numb in seconds but I pressed them to my chest, the long-forgotten words of the Death Incantation on my lips.

The crystal swished through the air and struck the crimson surface of the heart. The sorcerer whipped out a small pendant from under his gorget and clamped it in his fist. In a few giant leaps he got back to the entrance and threw himself on me. A moment later a psychic eruption made the Evernight shiver. A heatwave swept over us. The sorcerer staggered and fell to his knees. Blood trickled from tiny cracks under the beak of the helmet.

A tiny gull of sea-green turquoise flew up out of his loosened fingers. It attacked the numbed heart tearing out chunks of red unflesh, growing with every piece it swallowed. Runes and wisps vanished. The laws of reality finally got power over the cursed ship.

I shook the sorcerer by the arm. 'It worked. Let's hurry back to our folks.'

'Run away,' he wheezed out. 'When the heart wakes up, the backlash will kill you for sure. Cut an exit through the wall and never come back.' A wraithbone blade slipped out of his pouch by itself and stopped in mid-air hovering before my face. I caught it and stuffed it into my pouch.

'You'll die.'

He gave out a feeble chuckle. 'I will survive as I always do. For someone has to watch over my helpless brothers. Don't waste your time.'

I darted back through the quiet passages with my flashlight in my fist. My crew was sitting on the floor where I had left them, rubbing their eyes and blinking as if coming back to their senses after a shell shock.

Only Fluffster reacted with pleasing prowess. He jumped up once I cut his shackles with the blade and snatched it from my hands. A few quick slashes, and fresh air rushed in through a large breach.

While Fluffster was dealing with Angel's fetters, a giant in a horned helmet appeared in the breach. Sister folded her hands in the sacred sign but I smiled as I felt the man's null field.

'Quicker.' Lord Mentor grabbed me and Sister and put us on the rocky ground. I gasped for the thin chilly air, tears in my eyes at the sight of starry skies above my head. Fluffster crawled out next with Uncle and Panaque and handed the blade back to me.

'They're up there,' he said when we moved away from the Evernight.

'We will have to ensure the termination in person. I hoped you would have found the way to the Raptor by yourself,' Lord Mentor grunted.

'They will cope.'

'Shut up and pretend you are prisoners I am escorting to the magnificent Warmaster.' He pronounced the last words with obvious contempt.

Inside a Thunderhawk in the Black Legion colours Lord Mentor pointed at a pile of space suits and an armour case and headed to the cabin. As we were rising towards the Macan Kumbang, wave after wave of unbearable musk stench wafted out of the vents. When I put on the helmet, the air tank seemed to be filled with musk and ambergris.

The Thunderhawk had got so close I could see every moist fold and pulsing vein on the reddish porous surface of the flesh horror that grew over the barge. We passed by the Stumblebum still docked to the Macan Kumbang to the last remaining clean airlock. It opened at the third attempt, small flesh growths already popping out on the inner walls around the lock. A procession of drooling purple-skinned purestrain genestealer hybrids was dragging along the corridors, their movements slow as if they were stoned, their eyes locked on an invisible target ahead so they paid no attention to anything else.

Lord Mentor ran past them, jumping over piles of rotting waste and picked bones. 'To the bridge.'

A shuttle smeared in shit up to the roof stood abandoned in an unlit chamber after the second turn. Genestealers had torn out the doors and broken the windows but the engine turned out to be working when Lord Mentor activated the control systems and checked the level of fuel.

Genestealers of all generations were hobbling to the bridge from every corner of the barge. The narrower passages were so crowded we had to make detours. The closer to our goal, the more excited they got, stumbling into one another, running forward over the bodies of those who tripped on rubbish and corpses. Our old men ignored them so even Angel with his hatred of alien mutants was sitting still tapping on the hilt of a bolter taken from the Thunderhawk.

The Warpsmith's throne was the first I saw once we reached the upper platforms of the bridge. Hovering under the vault where the genestealers couldn't reach him, he clapped his hands cheering for someone underneath. When the shuttle rolled down a wide slide, I gasped and grabbed my new hot-shot laspistol from the seat.

On the navigation platform above a roiling sea of endless Genestealer crowds two former best friends-at-arms fought with desperate fury. The Panther's armour was a bulky mass of flesh breaking through cracked black ceramite swollen to grotesque proportions but the size didn't make him slower. He parried and hacked so quickly Aphedron, a swordsman of unrivalled prowess, had to move at top speed.

I stuck out of the window trying to find Imudon in the mess. He stood on the top of the single stairway, fending off genestealers constantly crawling up the narrow steps. His bolter fire had ripped more than a dozen to pieces but they were climbing on, standing on the others' shoulders to grab him and pull him down. The Panther's aura was luring them to the navigation throne, and they were ready to destroy the intruders who stood behind them and their mutating king.

'Help him!' I aimed at a genestealer who jumped on the steps and reached for Imudon's leg.

'Go on, Sergeant!' Lord Mentor's voice ordered from the speakers. Angel leapt out on the run. Fire gushed out of his jump pack, and he came down on the genestealers like a spirit or pure wrath, hacking and shooting at any who dared to come close.

Aphedron was moving a bit slower, his armour's actuators damaged by numerous blows. The Panther's cutlass had split his left pauldron and left deep cuts in his gorget and side. But a deep crack was running over the back plate of the mutated black suit, dangerously close to the reactor.

'We can bring him down with a few shots, sir!' Panaque raised his hellgun and closed one eye to take aim at the crack.

Fluffster gave him a nudge. 'Don't you dare. Deal with the genestealers if you want to shoot but I'd advise you to save the battery for a creepier thing.'

The navigation throne spun around. Aphedron jumped up on the seat and slashed upside down. The tip of his sword went into the breach. A small shard of black obsidian fell down to the floor and rolled away to the edge. The Panther staggered, reeled back and forth. The armour popped with a loud crack as he collapsed. Parts scattered around, and streams of dirty smoke pulled up, merging into a hideous beastly shape. A monster from the Casbah. Uncounted thousands of genestealers froze up and gave out a deafening howl.

Lord Mentor appeared from the cabin with a combi-bolter in hands. 'So we won't have to deal with it. Good riddance.'

I snatched two grenades from under Uncle's seat. 'I'll run to the airlock. We won't leave otherwise. Folks, let's do it together.'

Fluffster nodded approvingly. 'Quick thinking, Volentia. Take Sister and Panaque with you while we tougher fighters will take the three out of this shit.'

I ran up the slide to an airlock that was had less flesh growths than the others on this level. It still didn't open though the sensor lit up when I stuck out my hand with the rosette. The paralyzed genestealers weren't a problem anymore but the smoke monster was still swelling, its tendrils coiled around the three marines despite the joint fire from the shuttle. Streams of smoke were already twisting towards us. I grabbed the first grenade while Panaque and Sister opened fire on the monster's tendrils, chanting a litany. Torn scraps of dirty smoke merged back but it gave me a few seconds to hurl the grenade and duck.

Ichor gushed out of a giant raw wound. The lock opened a bit but got stuck again. I didn't dare to blow the second grenade so as not to damage the mechanism. The shard's call broke through the Shadow once I paused. I lingered first but cried out the Death Incantation to muffle the whisper. The flesh stirred, the wound closing before my eyes. Shooting at the thickening smoke, I whipped the wraithbone knife out of the pouch. As the stench of the wound leaked under my visor in the same way as the smell of musk, I held my breath and shoved my way through the crowd of mutants. The shuttle was already driving up in a cloud of smoke, pieces of metal falling off every second as the monster tore on the plating.

I struck on and on, cutting off growths of monstrous flesh that blocked the lock. After the tenth strike, the blade bent. After a dozen more, it broke in half. But the flesh had already ceded. The lock opened with a creak, and the swishing current of air carried me out into the void.

His clenched fists raised above his head in a gesture of victory, the Warpsmith rushed out past me. The mechanical throne split in half in the distance with a warp flash, and a transparent ethereal silhouette of its ascended master melted among the stars.

One by one, my friends floated out into the space, Lord Mentor bringing the rear. The marines moved forward with the power of their armour reactors. Imudon's shape appeared by my side, and I grabbed his gauntlet, flying away from the doomed barge towards the Raptor Imperialis waiting at a safe distance.

Among the messy flotsam I noticed a barely moving human shape. The old, hapless man who had betrayed us. He deserved a death sentence, I recalled his Inquisition record. I sighed and tugged Imudon by the arm. 'Let's pick up the scoundrel.'

As he pulled out the unconscious trader, I found the vox channel of our ship in the list. 'The Stumblebum, do you hear me? Take off immediately.'

There were a few cracks and shouts but the connection suddenly broke as if someone had turned off the vox. The flesh around the docked ship shattered at a powerful explosion. Its lascannons still blazing red hot, the Stumblebum left the barge and disappeared in the warp before I could re-establish the connection.

'Bastards,' I muttered.

'They're afraid you'll shoot them all for treason against whatever you'll be able to bring to your mind,' Imudon's voice chuckled in the channel.

The black surface of the Evernight came into sight from under the Macan Kumbang. There was a small growing warble on its distant end. A second, and a giant gull-shaped spaceship pecked its way out and followed the Stumblebum into the warp.

'Like a bird hatching,' I said.

Lord Mentor grumbled back, 'More like a botfly.'

The barge shivered, masses of flesh slowly inverting, making the hull fold like it was made of paper. In moments it was a formless maw devouring itself, a hideous grave for the genestealers and their mad king. The spiralling motion removed all features and details until a scarlet flesh sphere remained spinning against the void and then collapsed with a quiet implosion. Only a whirpool of flotsam was circling around the empty place.

A shockwave threw me away and turned me round towards the surface of Pholiotina. The Evernight had vanished without trace, a clean plateau with a small spot of the camp left behind.


	33. Episode 4 - Epilogue

Smouldering armour parts fell over the Panther, and he hissed at the touch of red-hot metal. Thick dirty smoke billowed out of the remains of his armor. Memories blew his mind with a maelstrom of visions. Visions of the past he had forgotten. His Diasporex clan travelling through the warp to trade with the strange new Great Kingdom of Terra and Mars. His parents seeing him off to join the Luna Wolves. False images of the Reaver Queen's court had faded, now little more than a dream he had seen in the cursed canyon where the abomination spoke to him from the abandoned fane. There he had found the suit driven by a hungry mind of its own. There his squad had been brought down by the smoke monsters like the one that was coiling around Aphedron, the ex-priest and the young loyalist. Yet it was the fane where Monos Pyrd, scion of void travellers, had been enthralled by the musky charm and silent promises of power.

The cryptek had known more of 'her' children when he wore flesh, not metal. Animal terror bound the Panther's limbs, gripped his twin hearts. For the first time in millennia. Swarms of rabid mutants surrounded him, not his loyal retainers. The men he had failed to lead. He had betrayed his company to get devoured and damned.

The howl of the genestealer crowd still in his ears, he crawled from under the cooling armour pieces, flaps of his torn bodyglove hanging from his shoulders and hips. A grenade exploded above but the paralyzed genestealers didn't flinch. Thousands of eyes were locked on the monster, blind adoration on the purplish deformed faces. The Warpsmith flew over his head with a cry of wild joy to throw himself out into the void. Air started leaking out of the Macan Kumbang. His warriors and serfs already on the surface, the captain was the last to leave the ship for good.

He ran to the closest screen to call back the shuttle but the map showed it parked in the camp underneath. The smoky monster had reached the vault, its tendrils spreading over the devotees. Good Emperor, he should have stayed a Space Leopard under His power instead of messing with Horus' wee goody boy and his best buddies. He should have stayed away from that abandoned piece of rock in the days of the Great Crusade.

Half-way down to the exit to the docks, he stopped and tapped his forehead. The trader's ship was still docked not far from the bridge. The augurs showed a mass of flesh growing over the open gates of the docking hub but there was a way planned long ago in the image of his clan's spaceships. If he managed to disconnect the ship, he could lead it along the hub to a thin wall hiding a tunnel out.

Inner passages to the hub were so blocked with genestealers the Panther had to climb up and move along the walls holding to bundles of cables hanging from the ceiling. His Diasporex instincts let him feel the systems going apart as the very sound of plates creaking and rattling had changed as flesh was overcoming the barge.

Shots boomed in the distance. At least one or two terminator guards could be waiting for him on board. A stench of burning flesh hit his nostrils when he rushed into the bay enveloped in black smoke. Normal smoke of walls charred with lascannons. The exit to the space blocked, the dazed crew had opened random fire, turrets spinning in all directions. Hooks that held the ship in the hub had mutated into thick creepers of tendons and muscles that didn't let it move an inch. The Panther dodged a shot and ducked to the floor.

Sensors of the only working terminal had been shattered by a cannon hit but the Panther pulled a reserve small dataslate out of its bottom part to type in his private codes. A list of channels appeared on the cracked screen. All were dead but one of the ship.

'You're doing it wrong!' he yelled into the microphone.

Voices on the other end exchanged whispers, then a sailor answered with astonishment, 'So what's the right way?'

'I'll tell you if you let me in.'

The cannon fire stopped. The ship gate slid aside. He got inside the vessel in one giant feline leap. The airlock gate has closed behind him with sombre hissing. He ran as fast as he could, kicking away weapons piled by the entrance, pushing aside gaping sailors. Blood pounding in his temples, he leapt up the stairs to the bridge and flopped down to the navigation throne. The machinery screeched under his weight but he leaned over the panels typing in endless lines of codes in moments.

All turrets turned to the creepers and discharged a salvo in sync. Before the tendons could grow back, the Panther turned up the engines to the max. The remaining muscles popped. The ship darted across the hub and plowed through the wall. Splinters stuck in the plating, it flew down the tunnel to break free.

His nerves were still so strained an obnoxious squeak from the speakers made him flinch. 'Incoming communication request allowed. Inquisitor Volentia of Ordo Hereticus on the line.'

'Damn the bloody lass,' he muttered to himself driving the ship to the half-closed exit.

'The Stumblebum, do you hear me? Take off immediately.'

The Panther crushed the speakers with a punch. He directed the cannons to the last flesh barrier ahead and fired another salvo. The ship tore its way through the burning flesh into the open. Without waiting for it to leave the system, the Panther sent a heads-on to the waiting navigator and sat back looking at the stars.

When the oculus closed at the warp jump, he wiped his forehead. Something nudged him in the back of his head but he just frowned, too drained to turn back.

'Hey, sailor,' a trembling cacophony of multiple voices called him from behind.

The Panther got up, only to see two dozens of guns aimed at him. He chuckled at the pale faces of his opponents. 'That's what you call gratitude. Fine, I think we all can clear up this little misunderstanding.'


	34. Episode 5 - Ghost in the Machine

Aether waves were rising higher as fierce gales were driving their ragged fleet out of the Eye. Howling daemons clawed at the hull of the Vengeful Spirit, the great storm spun it around like a twig of driftwood. The battle barge's eyes and soul, she watched out with her augurs, her guns aimed at the violent hordes that chased them. There had been no seas around her city of birth on her lost homeworld, and the swirling warp typhoons reminded her of black sandstorms that came from the cursed desert and buried villages and caravans. The White Seer, back on his throne, closed his eyes as if asleep but she saw the thin beam of his psyker-sight pierce the waves in a vain search for a spark of light.

Ahead of the armada a giant of spectral light marched forth through the stormy warp, a titanic hammer in his hands, and the Neverborn scattered in panic from under his steps. Again and again he raised the burning hammer, each blow to bring down a fierce Bloodthirster or a Lord of Change. A thickening wall of screaming darkness collapsed as he smashed it, and the warm light of the Astronomican poured over the ships.

'There is no place where the light of my Father does not shine!' the giant's cry of victory swept over the fleet like a thunderbolt. 'There is no foe who stands to His wrath I deliver.'

'On Sacred Mars I was born the second time,' she sent back to him. 'I follow the rightful King of Mars.'

'They thought I was weak as I am down to a severed head but which of the vessels will disobey me if I command them? If I order them to turn back, a whole swarm of warp-scum conjured by the rebel lordling and his minions will not stop me.'

His only anchor in the material world, a skull coated in silvery living metal, rested on top of her tank since Abaddon had brought it there from his sire's collection of relics on a day of direst need. Since then, the King's necrodermis had grown into the systems of the ship. It covered the top of her physical body's head like a crown, merging with the remains of her brain to restore the parts destroyed by the Psychneuein millennia ago.

'You have returned my past to me. My name. How can I go against your will?'

'Remember who you are, Itzara Khayon, daughter of Prospero, so that the nameless horror that is chasing the fleet does not swallow you.'

A third voice, a sad psychic rustle, joined them. 'Forgive me, lord uncle. I have come to see my sister.'

Struck by the grief in brother's voice, she rushed back to her body from the warp depths. The machinery initiated the Rites of Opening, and the massive shutters of her tank slid aside.

'Itzara.' Her brother, fully clad in armour, with a travel bag on his belt, put his gauntlet on the surface, and she touched the glass from the other side. The machinery reacted to the bout of anxiety she tried to suppress, and the ship jolted.

'The ship feels your sadness, Iskandar. You were not going to leave until we got to the proximity of Cadia.'

'I'm heading to Terra. To deliver Ezekyle's message to the High Lords. So is my duty.'

'And something else. So suddenly, to a certain gruesome death.'

Iskandar gave out a wistful chuckle. 'I saw things I wasn't supposed to, to cut it short. Don't be sad, little sister. Take care of the ships so that our merry folks survived the trip, as many as possible.'

'We will wait for your safe return, brother.'

'I have many brothers, and I feel sorrow for most though sorrow makes us weaker,' the King of Iron bellowed as the doors of the Machine Spirit chamber closed behind Iskandar's back.

She would have cried but for the amniotic liquid in her eyes. 'They will execute him on Terra, and we will not be able to come to the rescue.'

'My Father alone decides who lives and who dies. These dirty lordlings are naught but frightened ants before the blazing dawn. Brace up for another daemon horde is gathering ahead.'

A wave of tremendous height came down on his spectral form but he emerged unscathed, furious, radiating in the Omnissiah's light. 'No one will stand in my way, for I am the Vengeful Spirit!'


	35. Episode 5 Chapter 1

The ship heading to Inwit was the last to take off. It carried away a newly promoted Inquisitor of Ordo Machinum, his only acolyte and the last pieces of my old life.

'Uncle, you would protect me in the slums my late mentor adored,' I said with reproach at the departure, my eyes still red after the farewells with Angel and Sister. 'We've all been to cursed ships, xenos worlds, the most horrible nooks of the galaxy together.'

Uncle blinked and sighed. 'Come to visit us, lassie. Lord Asterolepis, our appointed curator in the system, has promised us a cottage in the vicinity of the capital.'

Panaque, more enthusiastic than sad, kept on looking down at his new shiny rosette on his chest. 'I'll tell you in confidence, ma'am, what a fancy secret task I've got from the sector Conclave! They say rumours about Men of Iron of truly ancient lore have started spreading again but tech-guilds from Inwit prevent the Mechanicus itself from investigating it. They have asked us for assistance, quite a rare occurance.'

'My first independent case was a box of poisoned candies from an office desk.' I had smiled like him when my rescuers saw me off over the green meadows around a peaceful city.

'It has been great to learn from you.'

'I'm not so much of a mentor, as you've probably noticed. But at last there has been a victory after all the glorious defeats.'

We shook hands. Uncle hugged me, his eyes glistening with tears he tried to hide. Fluffster who was waiting for us to finish the goodbyes walked up to Panaque. 'Don't forget what I told you about local technopaths, that's how they call their tech-guild specialists.'

'Lord Asterolepis has sent me a list of technopath candidates.'

'Fine. Don't get bored during the flight and send a heads-on on the landing.'

The gate closed with a clang. I stood staring at the polished metal door until Fluffster took me by the hand. 'Something ends, something begins.'

I shook my head so heavy as after a few sleepless nights. 'I cannot even choose whom to recruit.'

'Fate brought these ones to your retinue, not your own choice.'

'Uncle and Panaque will be safe on Inwit, by the Emperor's mercy. But Sister and Angel have departed for Cadia. Where millions will die soon.'

'Strange to hear this from an Imperial citizen. In a state engaged in permanent war, Inquisitors have to look for new recruits way more often.'

Instead of following Fluffster to the bridge, I holed up in a small mess room of the passenger compartments. All crew members on leave in the city underneath but a few on duty, the Raptor Imperialis felt like a silent temple on a cemetery world, especially after Lord Mentor had left along with his guards and retainers. Before my friends embarked, we had spent a few pleasant days roaming the quiet streets, happy just to see sunlight again after benighted Oldshadow and Pholiotina. But even during the last flight from the ex-pirate kingdom I would drop in to the mess where Lord Mentor's men kept booze for high-ranking guests.

Bottles stood in neat rows up to the ceiling in a big cupboard that occupied a whole corner. Half of the bottom row was empty as I had finished the seventh bottle of brandy yesterday. I found the old multitool among the rubbish in my pouch. As always, the shard touched my palm by itself. I tapped on the smooth surface with my fingertip and took it out to the table.

My fingers shaky with hangover and grief, it took two deep cuts to open the eighth bottle. I wiped blood off the opener and the hilt. Stains of rust I couldn't clean properly reminded me of the day among the lupines when I stuck it in Imudon's old wound. I threw it down on the shard and quickly poured myself the first shot. After three shots my heart felt warmer, contours of the room got hazy. Tears ran down my cheeks as I clutched the glass with the fourth shot, my lips frozen in a crooked smile.

The shard's glow was getting brighter, a hypnotic beacon, a fountain of raw power. My soul stirred in thirst. It took a slight effort of mind to hurl the multitool to the other end of the mess. I narrowed my eyes sipping on the booze.

The door creaked behind my back. I startled, and the glass slipped out of my fingers. Booze trickled down the table edge onto my knees.

'Here you are,' said Imudon. 'Fluffster calls you to the command center. Your dataslate is out of reach.'

I hiccuped. 'Cause I've… turned it off. To the warp with the rodent.'

Imudon sat opposite me and pushed the bottle aside. 'You've been drinking as a fish since we left Pholiotina.'

I looked into his stern eyes. 'Last time I was drinking that much… that was after you had stolen my crew.'

'A smile of fake confidence again. Pull yourself together if you don't want to turn into a copy of your wretch of a mentor.'

'I say, man, I'm just not needed here.' I picked up the glass and squeezed it. 'There are big games galore but no damn job for me. Low-ranking Hereticus operatives do bounty hunting or infiltrate petty cults but it's too pathetic for you two pompous Angels of War and your vile puppeteers. The old blank has gone for good but haven't taken you and Aphedron along to the Cadian frontlines where you would be of use.' The glass slipped out again and rolled across the table.

'We're staying with you.'

'To remind me I'm a poorly equipped worthless weakling.' I grabbed the shard, and a blaze of power set my soul on fire.

He put his heavy hand over my fist with the shard. 'This is not the power to crave for.'

'Well.' My tongue loosened by booze, a question I hadn't dared to ask Fluffster popped out as soon as it came to my mind. 'I haven't had nightmares of the Dark Apostle since we left the Macan Kumbang. There've been no those cramps in my midriff either. The Evernight carried my nemesis away, and he didn't chase us. Maybe…that miracle happened to me as well after you and the Panther. So no more harm from the thing.''

He shook his head. 'Lord Mentor and Fluffster spent hours discussing how to keep you safe from the mark's further influence.'

'As usual, there are lucky people. As well as the opposite.'

'Everything is His will. Gather your strength to pass the trials decently.'

'Be so kind to pass me the bottle with liquid strength.'

He pushed it to the opposite end of the table. 'Booze makes you weaker.'

I closed my eyes. 'There's no other source. No owl, no family.'

'You've accepted us. In our joint missions you cared for us.'

'Does it matter if the world is falling apart? When the first whispers of the Black Crusade started spreading through the Inquisition offices, we youngsters envisioned it as an epic clash of demigods. A last stand of noble armies. I imagined us five misfits holding our ground against a horde of traitors and daemons, dying together in the owl to go to the Emperor's kingdom.'

'What a dramatic scene. Have you taken it from a school book about Imperial saints?'

Against my will, tears streamed down my face dripping to my tunic. 'You've got no ties to the Imperium. To the modern Imperium. It's often silly, often pathetic but it's the world that friggin' brought me up.'

He leaned closer, his voice quiet and hollow. 'It's true that we had no saints during the Crusade. With Him by our side all we needed was tenacity, dedication and natural human ingenuity to accomplish our goals, to drive back the horrors of the Age of Strife. You need faith to do that, the cornerstone of your personal world. My own personal world has fallen apart with the start of the Great Crusade. I was a heir of my chieftain family of devoted Khornates with a wife and two newborn sons. It was all my inheritance from the Old Night. An army of space people has descended from a great fleet of sky ships to destroy the blood altars in the name of Mankind and to teach us feral and superstitious folks how to wipe ourselves. Very soon my wife decided she didn't need a caveman by her side. She took both sons to Ultramar and remarried within a year. The Imperials hired many of our young to the army. I was luckier to be chosen by legion recruiters.'

Tears kept on running, and I covered my face with both palms. 'So you didn't see them anymore.'

'I did. She died of old age already after the end of the Heresy. She outlived both sons by me as they had fallen in the battles for Macragge. One fought for the Imperium, the other sided with the traitors. But their children had children of their own. Their distant offspring has spread over the galaxy while their failed forefather has got stuck in his old musings.'

'A family saga,' I snapped up. 'Is this supposed to tell me I should shut up with my petty complaints?' My bowels spasmed, and I pressed my hand to my mouth.

Imudon got up. 'I'll tell Fluffster you're busy. You'd better go to the rooms now.' He put the unfinished bottle back on its shelf and left.

You should have stayed, I wanted to tell him but hiccuped instead. Sitting all alone in an empty compartment mulling over the endless memories would really turn me into a drunkard in no time. The news about the mark would have struck me if I was soberer. There was a bright side of the nuisance though. A goal to chase in the future bleak months.

I turned on the dataslate and connected to the ship network. 'Chief Astropath, an urgent order concerning the case under investigation. Send BOLOs out to every astropath choir in the vicinity so they forwarded it further. If anyone has information on the gull ship from the attachment, they must send it to my astropathic mailbox. Privacy is strictly demanded. Even from other members of the Inquisition.' I quickly made up a description of the sorcerer and his vessel and pressed on 'Send'. By the Lex Imperialis, even senior Inquisitors didn't have an absolute right to remove me from investigating any incident. Though with so many high-scaled agents, I needed to pick up new skills to ensure maximum autonomy. What was disturbing about my position, both Lord Corydoras, my current curator, as well as his Lunar relative Lord Platydoras himself, had ancient ties of friendship with Fluffster and his buddies. As well as Lady Cichlasoma, the Malleus boss of the sector who was Lord Mentor's distant offspring.

Only Lord Kryptopterus, the High Inquisitor of local Ordo Xenos, played a game of his own. I had already inquired him about Fluffster's mysterious connections. Sadly, the man I was chasing was a simple heretic with little use for an alien hunter. Though the Eldar artifact that had crippled the Evernight would certainly interest Kryptopterus, I thought typing a quick draft of a letter.

Hangover pestered me worse than always on the next day so I stayed in my room while everyone on the ship was busy with their daily cares. Aphedron hadn't returned from another tour of bar districts yet, Fluffster was tinkering with the Machine Spirit. I was sure Imudon was on board but didn't dare to call him up. He always claimed all he wanted was to be left alone but fought in Lord Mentor's secret crusade with more devotion than his fellow pardoned renegade while he could have escaped with the help of his acquaintances from the other side. Not even out of fear of the Terrans. One day I should get up the courage to visit him in the gym for another talk.

Since that day, I gave up drinking and dedicated the remaining energy to self-discipline that would help me to survive the stalemate. Every day I got up early, training in the gym and at the shooting range, reading books from the ship library and taking tech lessons from Fluffster in the engine chambers and docks. One afternoon I even found the old pink dress and descended to the city to take a stroll in a park on the middle levels. It was the brightest of summer months but the alleys felt like early autumn when the colours are still fresh but coming chills are already in the air. On the way back I spent half an hour in a small needlework shop hidden in a sea of greenery on an old narrow street. Talking to the frail elderly shopkeeper, I tried to recall how to live away from the horrors of the galaxy. She brewed me a cup of floral tea and brought me a stepladder so I could look at balls of bright knitting silk under the wooden ceiling.

At local sunset, with a cloth bag with three hanks of yarn, a stitching kit and a big package of sweets, I ran out of the shuttle and hurried to the astropaths to download a new portion of information. Ninety-nine per cent of bullshit, one per cent of false clues, like on all earlier days. In the doors of the astropath pavilion I bumped into Imudon going downstairs with a flash drive in hands.

'It's been a while,' I said and hung the bag on my elbow to shake hands with him. 'The city's worth spending a few hours under the sun.'

A shadow of a smile flickered on his peaked face when he looked at me. 'Not many occasions to wear summer clothes in these time of ending.'

I handed him the package of sweets, and he took a handful of candies. 'I've got my wage today, so I felt obliged to buy something for my only friends left. One day, when you're less busy, I might tell you more about the city where a candy bag led my team to an artifact coveted by Aphedron Pansexualis.'

'Just don't call him Pansexualis to his face.'

'Fine, gonna check up the mail. Hope I'm lucky today so we continue the hunt for the Mockingbird.'

The smile left his lips. 'I'm not sure Fluffster agrees.'

'I've already chosen a few allies in the Inquisition.'

It was the beginning of a working week so the mail arrived in such numbers it took a full standard day to read through the endless reports. My chain letters had reached the sector borders, and every big planet had found something to write me about. Fifteen reports described a rogue trader ship named the Kittiwake, three astropaths had managed to locate a system that marked its ships with gull silhouettes. Finally, I stumbled upon a needle in the mountain of a haystack.

The letter was marked with a Mechanicus cog and signed by my old acquaintance, Magos Explorator Tetraodon. Right after meeting Taphius, another reminder from the sweet young years. 'Glad to hear from you, Lady Volentia. By a coincidence, I've been searching for the gull ship for two standard weeks. It carried away a glamoured psyker who had worked for my research mission on a Perdita world named Cyprinus on Imperial maps you will find in the attachment. I'm currently digging up relics from the Dark Age of Technology with the assistance of Clan Vurgaan of the Iron Hands, and you're welcome to join us. My greetings to your laudable acolytes, I would be very delighted to see them again.'

The last sentence brought tears to my eyes despite my best efforts. I reached for an emergency bottle hidden under my pillow but slapped myself on the hand. It was time to move forth without the need to drown nostalgia in booze. I found the crew chat in the messenger app of my dataslate. 'Come to the mess room for an important announcement. We have to get ready for departure in a day.'

Fluffster was the first to arrive. Despite my fears, he spared me of long tedious objections. 'Let's wait for the two. Imudon is already on the way but I'm afraid Aphedron will be quite late. He's sleeping like a log after five days of carousing in a row.'

'It's very important,' I started with a cheerful grin. 'Lord Mentor will be fine, I'll write to Lord Corydoras so he gives us a free vessel after Tamias left.'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'The Raptor is fully yours to sail.'

I stared at him, stunned. 'You're not gonna forbid me to…'

'I've taken a copy of your map from the Chief Astropath. It's not too far from the Cadian sector if we're ever needed there.'

'The prospects of snatching some archeotech is quite tempting.' I winked at him.

'This as well.'

Both marines accepted the idea with stoic resolution though Aphedron looked obviously disappointed to leave the city and its frivolities. Pretty sure the ship was packed with spy devices and warp beacons for Lord Mentor's clique to watch over us so I could only draw their interest to the Mockingbird chase. The sorcerer, an ancient Terran, had keys to knowledge useful to get before the real mess begins around Cadia.

During the pleasingly short but still boring journey I found the list of the Iron Hands Clan Companies to discover Tetraodon's companions were also a reminder of my first case I recalled so often recently. Verrox the brute, Arothron who had snapped a Greater Daemon's neck with his augmented but still bare hands. The desire to live and work even a broken leg and the garden of flesh hadn't ruined. Aphedron was probably aware of his old rivals but his happy-go-lucky attitude rid him of fears and doubts.

Cyprinus, a dead world that had been a megapolis long before the Unification Wars, orbited a small yellow star along with four other lifeless rock spheres. Its moons had been destroyed by the same bombings that had vanquished the city in a brief but deadly war the reasons of which remained obscure. Magos Tetraodon had drilled deep into the burnt remains of the main city that occupied a whole continent. His vessel, along with the battered barge of the Iron Hands, was anchored in high orbit to defend the system from any other relic hunters.

Our shuttle left the Raptor for the dirty atmosphere of Cyprinus. We descended past a pack of Mechanicus surveillance drones and a few remaining spires to the Explorator camp built in the upper levels of a massive shaft. Like on a forge world, the place was stuffed with all kinds of machinery. Massive servo-constructs and cargo servitors were hauling rockcrete blocks and charred chunks of metal from the depths and dumping it to growing spoil-heaps that surrounded the shaft like a mountain ridge. Mobile laboratories were analyzing retrieved pieces and sending data through hundreds of network channels.

'May the Omnissiah's grace be with you, Magos!' I shouted into the vox. 'Where to find you?'

'Hello, hello, my lady,' Tetraodon's husky voice answered in a few seconds. 'I'm in my personal lab, already sending the coordinates. Sorry for not meeting you in person, there've been accidents here. I'll call up Verrox and Arothron right now.'

'Better not,' Aphedron grunted but I had already broken the connection.

The shuttle was moving through the dark well of the shaft lit by flickering lamps of the mining machinery. Deep underneath, the living blocks glowed with hundreds of windows and signal lights like a town at night. Guarded by two quiet Skitarii rangers, Tetraodon's lab was located in the very heart of the camp next to a vast server chamber and the main reactor that provided energy for his exploration host.

Tetraodon was sitting before a three-dimensional projection of a city district, a cup of steaming recaff on the control panel. By his side two tech-adepts about my age in dust-stained red robes were studying corroded data modules, servo-scribes hovering over their heads. He tapped his mechanical finger on a section that lit red and waved to us with the other hand.

'You're welcome, dear guests! My lady, Lord Crinitus, meet Marilyna and Pao, my apprentices. The other acolytes of your crew are currently staying on board, I guess.'

'That's all left.' My voice trembled, and I faked a bout of coughing.

'My condolences.'

'Not in that sense, Magos. I will send them your greetings.'

'Times do change. I assume they have returned to their previous positions.' Tetraodon's tone remained placid no matter what he was talking about. 'Delighted to meet your new companions.'

'Not that new,' a bass voice roared from behind a tangle of cables that hung from the ceiling beside the projector. Arothron's bulky shape clad in black and silver broke through the jungle of cables, his massive mechadendrites catching on the wires. The Iron Father stopped before Aphedron, his red augmetic eye lit up to scan the armour chips as he stared into the eye lenses of Aphedron's helmet. 'Here you are, heretic. You dare to wear the old legion colours soiled by your old treachery.' He turned to me, and I tried to pull a smile under his glare. 'What an unscrupulous Radical you've become in these years, Inquisitor.'

'I'll beat the shit out of this scumbag if he tries anything,' Verrox bellowed from behind the stalls with relic machinery samples.

'Sirs, my fighter was pardoned by a miraculous intervention of the Emperor Himself, and it's documented by a cadre of special agents of Terra. He has both normal hands, as you see, and no more shark teeth under the visor,' I said and looked up at Fluffster for support.

He nodded. 'A special order from Terra.'

Arothron paused. 'The other one has no Chapter colours.'

'He was the last loyal survivor from… the Bear Wardens,' I quickly made up a Chapter name that sounded like Imudon's original legion.

'Probably successors of the Dark Angels,' Arothron said in a more peaceful tone.

'Wanna a rematch, Mr. Automaton?' Aphedron chuckled. Fluffster gave him a shove.

'Good that all misunderstandings have been resolved,' said Tetraodon. 'Soon servitors will bring you drinks and snacks, and we can see the latest data.'

Sipping on burning hot recaff, I took a cookie from a package and opened a list of files projected over the panels. The fake curriculum of the mysterious psyker was as unremarkable as his other aliases.

'That's him for sure,' I said. 'He worked for the rebel council of Forge Colomesus during the riots.'

'He assisted Marilyna and Pao with a really priceless STC we had managed to uncover on the lower levels and pull up to the surface.' He found a file in the bottom of the list. 'An advanced model of a city reactor. Fit enough to power a hive.'

'You wrote me that he had stolen the best archeotech. So like him. He's roaming around snatching things human and xenos as well as bits of ancient lore. I've got my own reasons to pursue him.'

'Sadly, my astropaths were unable to scope out the warp for the traces of the gull last week, my lady. A vicious bunch of xenos assaulted the bottom part of the shaft six standard days ago. All drilling rigs and primary platforms destroyed.'

'Aeldari raiders?' I asked trying to find the necessary report in the list.

'The Hrud,' Arothron growled. 'Cowardly garbagers. There's their junk colony somewhere in the ruins, and we have to burn it to the ground together with the xenos scum. Captain Verrox has dispatched tactical squads to explore the underground passages on both sides. Yesterday they were lucky.'

'Maybe you'd like to see the xeno-consorting wretch we caught.' Verrox appeared before us, his gauntleted fists clenched. 'We've put him in fetters in the upper cells where it's the coldest. Once I'm done with the excavators, I'm going to personally interrogate him. I'll break every damn bone of his body if he dares to keep mumb.'

'May I speak to him first?' I asked.

'Here you are. He's not of the dangerous kind. Don't spare the bastard.'

'I will accompany you.' Arothron put his mechadendrite on my shoulder and examined my face. Paranoid as many chaplains, he surely expected me to run off with a Hrud army after he had seen Aphedron in my retinue.

The small passenger elevator barely had room for even Arothron alone. I squeezed to the back corner and crouched under a bulky metal claw hanging from Arothron's back plate. It was growing colder level by level, and I wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck. Hands in pockets, I followed him out to a dark corridor lit by a couple dim whitish lamps.

Prison cells in the end of the corridor had been offices or classrooms before the city's death, their walls black with soot, window panes melted. The dazzling beam of a flashlight mounted on Arothron's mechadendrite slid over an unconscious man in rags lying face down on the floor. Blackened blood had frozen under his foot bent under an unnatural angle, his wrists were chained to the wall.

'But for a precise shotgun shot, he would have eluded us.' Arothron kicked the captive in the side. 'He slipped down the ledge right under their feet. Sit up, bastard!'

The captive moved with a groan, pressed his stiff hand to his wounded leg. 'I cannot tell you anything,' he whispered. It's… forbidden.'

'An Inquisitor is here to interrogate you. If you keep mumbling, I'll smash your other leg.'

The captive's head jerked up. 'What Ordo?' he said louder.

Arothron gripped his throat with a mechadendrite. 'You're not to ask questions!' He lifted the captive into the air and directed the flashlight beam at the captive's chest. There was a small bump on the dirty skin under the torn shirt. 'An information chip. He deactivated it before we could scan it. Magos Tetraodon didn't want to remove it before your arrival fearing to destroy the contents.'

I pulled out my rosette. 'Hereticus.'

The grimace of excitement on the captive's face faded. He licked his chipped lips and closed his eyes. I reached for my flask and held it to his mouth.

'No need.' The mechanical claw squeezed my arm so hard I bit my tongue. 'I'll let you ask questions, the rest is up to me.'

I raised the other hand. 'The Emperor granted my peers the authority to take decisions. This man has served the Holy Ordos and will answer to a person of the Ordos.'

The captive took a sip and coughed. Brandy trickled down his chin smeared with blood. I touched his shoulder. 'You were expecting someone from Ordo Xenos. Do you serve under Lord Kryptopterus?'

He blinked. 'Lord… Kryptopterus…'

'He's a good acquaintance of mine. A man from my retinue saved him from a gruesome death in a monster's jaws. Don't say anything out loud. Think about what you'd like to tell.'

He looked me straight into the eyes while I was whispering psyker litanies. My abilities had grown in the presence of the shard, and I hoped to hear at least a few of his thoughts.

'Lady… The Hrud… Cold abyss… Death deep down. They know. Don't tell...'

'Witchery,' Arothron snapped up with contempt. 'Let's go up, Inquisitor.'

He turned his back to the huddled captive and kicked the door. I nodded and followed him into the corridor, my fingers and nose already tingling in the burning cold. The mysterious aliens knew what had happened in the shaft but had their reasons to stay away from the vengeful Iron Hands.

'Have a cloak brought to him lest he'll die,' I said.

'Our apothecary has injected him with a drug mixture to postpone death by exposure,' Arothron said. 'Up there, you'll tell anything you've found out to Captain Verrox.'

I crossed my arms on my chest, my heart pounding under the carapace. 'I'm afraid this is confidential data I can entrust to an operative of my rank only.'

'The rule of force is the only law of the wilderness. Do you have an Exterminatus fleet or an army behind your back, Inquisitor? This is our common war, and our Clan had taken damage from alien sabotage.'

'Blowing up half of the city will hardly help to retrieve the archeotech. Magos Tetraodon will support me.'

'You're too petty of a cop to understand what punishment and vengeance really mean.'

Once we got back to the lab, I found the marines by Fluffster's side and sat down between them. Arothron said something to Verrox in the binary code, and both marines headed to the panel, their stares locked on me.

'The wretch has told you his lousy secrets.' Verrox pointed at me. 'Are you gonna to side with the traitor we'll behead tomorrow?'

'He has shared the details of a mission too secret to describe to the Chapters.' I pressed myself to Imudon's side.

Tetraodon waved both hands. 'Calm down, sirs. There's nothing worth acting up.'

'Give me some time to do my own investigation, Captain,' I said firmly. 'I swear no harm will be done to you and your men.'

'Until tomorrow,' Verrox roared. 'If not, I'll break the wretch and will take care of you. If you prove innocent, I'll replace any damaged parts with augmetics from my forge. If not, your boss will get your head in an iron chest with a note.'

'No.' Imudon got up, his gauntlet on my shoulder. 'You shouldn't threaten an Agent of the Throne like an underhive criminal.'

Verrox gritted his teeth. 'I'll rip you in half with my bare hands alone with your lecherous buddy.'

An binary signal beeped so loudly it nearly deafened me. Tetraodon got to his feet and showed his clenched metal fist to the marines. Arothron beeped back. They exchanged a few angry remarks, then Arothron said a short phrase to Verrox. Verrox nodded.

'The Magos has spoken for you, Inquisitor,' said Arothron. 'He values the Terran sage's high opinion of you. You're allowed to deal with the case until tomorrow afternoon.'

'Ferocious jerks,' I said to my crew with a chuckle when we finally left the lab for the rooms in the living barracks provided by our host. 'I'll laugh at those who say the Sharks are the scariest.'

Fluffster sighed. 'Way fiercer than the Iron Warriors. The death of their primarch imposed the ultimate fear of weakness upon them. They respect only those who can defend themselves.'

'Even with a stronger crew, I still suck.'

'Everyone sucks for the time being. The Iron Hands might teach you a good lesson but I won't advise to admire their way of life blindly.'

A long escalator brought us to a likeness of a small hab-block built from metal vans. The former city square around was brightly lit but tunnels of destroyed streets wound further into the impenetrable dark. It was already night in the camp, and there was no one outside but three cyber-mastiffs sniffing around. They surrounded us but once I held the rosette over the auspex of the largest hound, they lost their interest in the newcomers and trotted away to the corner of the block.

There was something wrong around the place. A subtle, chilly psychic draught came from the tunnels. I gave Aphedron a nudge, and he nodded.

'Psyker?' I asked him.

'Not a human one.'

I ran to the source of the draught, the marines on both sides with their bolters drawn. A second after I had left the circle of lamplight, something brushed against my shoulder. A small hand caught me by the arm. Where nothing but shadows had been, short, crouched creatures wrapped in hooded ragged robes appeared from nowhere, flickering from place to place before I could see them properly. Another hand gripped me by the back of my coat. A gun barrel poked me in the neck.


	36. Episode 5 Chapter 2

Thin fingers held me tight by both hands. The strangers, veiled in a constantly shifting haze, talked in barely audible anxious squeaks, their long guns aimed at us. Little was known about the Hrud apart from the bits included in our manuals but their outlook was easy to recall by blurred picts in the paragraphs about the most dangerous threats. I expected the cyber-mastiffs to sense the intrusion but the mechanical guards froze up at the wall, their eye-lamps blinking. Fluffster stood in a circle of strangers towering over them like a teacher surrounded by children. Even the marines had hung the bolters on their belts and crossed their arms.

'Newcomers,' a high-pitched voice spoke inside my mind. 'Don't stand in our way. A hundred years will pass for you in a second.'

'Nocturnal Warriors,' I sent back, 'you're after the man taken captive.'

'Captive by the iron men. The iron men will demolish our juunlak.'

They knew what happened here. It was the right moment to act. 'He's a man of the Inquisition. So am I. Lord Kryptopterus who sent him is a friend of mine.'

Their grip loosened. The distortion field disappeared, the psychic wind calmed down. One of the Hrud walked out of the circle and pulled back the dusty hood of their robe. A pair of large round eyes stared at me.

'You have the sigil.'

I showed him the rosette. 'The iron men will kill you. Only I stand between them and their captive.'

'The cold death from the underneath will come for them.'

'The man told me about it. That was why you destroyed the machines.'

The Hrud nodded. 'We must take the man away before the cold death takes us. He is sworn to the Elders.'

'Well, I will let you free him without a fight. The iron men won't give up otherwise. But for a bargain.'

The Hrud paused clutching the fusil. 'What do you want?'

'To know more about the cold death. I'll tell it to Lord Kryptopterus.' There had been reasons for the sorcerer to steal the excavated relic. To choose this long desolate place and run away right before the mess.

The other xenos started squeaking at an even higher pitch, their joint aura got electrified with tension.

'You should ask Magos Tetraodon first,' said Fluffster.

I rubbed my temple. 'I doubt he allows it.'

'He'll keep the Iron Hands at bay,' said Imudon. 'They don't feel like battling his Skitarii.'

'I'll promise him some useful info to study then.'

'Why shall we trust you?' the Hrud's voice cheeped in my head. 'You will lead the iron men to the juunlak.'

'If you fear the cold death, it's indeed dangerous for us as well.'

'Dawnspark will go with you,' the choir of other Hrud squeaked as one. 'He will bring the zanhaad here. Your fighters stay here. We show you the cold our deceived kin brought to the juunlak.'

The Hrud who had spoken to me closed his eyes, his mind lit up. I touched his shoulder. 'Wait a bit. I need to rap it up with the tech-priest. He's not of a chattering kind.'

I breathed in and out listening to long beeps in the vox, then there was a light crack, and I heard Tetraodon's relaxed voice. 'Hope you like your rooms, ma'am. I'll be glad to answer your questions if you feel curious.'

'Well, Magos… Are the marines still around?'

'They need to tinker with the damaged excavators I'm afraid. You may call them up, the password of their channel is in the list of documents I sent you.'

'Actually, I need the opposite. The Hrud have come for the captive.'

A sigh echoed in the vox. 'Good Omnissiah, I told the Iron Hands that wasn't the best idea. The xenos are in the living blocks if they're around you. My storages are on the way to the cells.'

'If you take care of the Iron Hands, I'll find out why the Hrud blew your shaft.'

'Don't you mean…'

'There's some great shit down there, to put it short. I guess the sorcerer was there because of that shit.'

Tetraodon's machinery gave out a screech. 'This might be of more value than all our loot combined. But scandals of that scale are what I need the least anyway.'

'Lord Crinitus is totally for exploring.' I waved my hand. Fluffster came closer and said a long phrase in the binary.

'If you manage to come back till tomorrow afternoon,' said Tetraodon. 'But I cannot guarantee the Iron Hands won't chase you. Well, wait a bit. I'll send Chi-Zeta my Alpha ranger to your place. He'll wait for you before the cells and will turn off the security systems without you being noticed. If the shit has material proofs, bring at least something. Chi-Zeta will have three fortified containers.'

'A tech-ranger will accompany us,' I said to Dawnspark. 'To keep the iron men away.'

Dawnspark darted to the closest tunnel so swiftly he blurred into a blob of haze. 'Show us the way.'

'I'm not a wall climber. We need to take the elevator.'

'You get into the cabin, I climb the shaft.'

Augurs didn't react to the Hrud or malfunctioned in their distortion fields but the crepuscular xenos' paranoia forced them to choose the most discreet routes and nooks. Their legends told they used to live under the bright sun of their lost homeworld but had had to leave it during the War in Heaven to wander from place to place hiding from some unknown threats. Some even say the Hrud run through time as easily as through space. Their juunlaks, tunnel-cities of junk and salvaged machines, attracted scavengers and outcasts of many races who often chose to live among the Hrud as zanhaads, something between a thrall and a sponger. It was still claimed to be dangerous as many zanhaads got a chemical addiction to juunlak pheromone trails.

The elevator cabin stopped on the prison floor. Dawnspark's blurred silhouette crawled out on the top of the cabin, clinging to cables and rockcrete ledges with all four limbs. He jumped down to the frost-covered floor and grabbed the fusil from behind his back.

'It's ok,' I said and pressed on the vox bead. 'The ranger will warn me anyway.'

'Inquisitor, I am here,' a mechanical voice answered after a signal. 'Three minutes to lead the captive out.'

I ran along the corridor after the Hrud to the end where the cloaked ranger stood by an open door with a bundle in his metal hands. The captive lay on the floor in the same tormented position but his arms were free of the fetters. Dawnspark leaned over the captive squeaking and took a small vial from under his robes.

'The iron men poisoned him,' he said.

'Magos Tetraodon has given me a robe for the captive.' Chi-Zeta handed me the bundle, and Dawnspark snatched it from my hands at once.

The acolyte gave out a wheeze when Dawnspark tried to seat him up. Blood streamed down the wounded leg. Chi-Zeta picked the acolyte up, wrapped him in the robe and secured the leg with a mechadendrite. 'A splintered fracture of the tibia detected. Probably caused by the fall.'

'Back,' said Dawnspark. 'A long way to go.'

Dark tunnels behind the living quarters formed a vast maze of streets, dried canals and barricades of destroyed hab-blocks and sidewalk arches. Planned and built better than many Imperial hives, the city buildings survived the heavy bombings and millennia of desolation, nearly intact long after the bones of their dwellers had turned to dust. Formless piles of decayed rubbish lay in cracked show-windows of former shops, molten glass splinters cracked under our feet.

'You've got an unusual name for one who lives in the dark,' I told Dawnspark on the way.

He blinked under the hood. 'Our kind hopes to find the way up to the sun one day. Many name their children Sunflash, or Dayglow, or Starfleck.'

'Are you living there for all the centuries since the world's death?'

'The Elders chose the place to settle. If they knew about the cold down below, they would have avoided not only the system, but the whole region.' He severed the psychic link abruptly and ran forward with the fusil ready.

'Foes ahead.' Aphedron's kineblades left their sheaths, glimmering around him like a swarm of bees in the crossed beams of our flashlights.

'The place is abandoned but for the Nocturnal Warriors,' said Chi-Zeta. 'Magos Tetraodon has scanned the vicinity.'

The acolyte stirred in Chi-Zeta's arms. 'They fear the call of the cold abyss. An old curse. It draws them to the edge.'

'That was the purpose of your mission?' I asked him.

'Ten of us were sent to different Hrud raheeds when they started moving at once twenty years ago as if fleeing something. The Elders thought the place to be safe and bountiful away from both the Imperium and the Aeldari. The call of the abyss has deceived them.'

His eyes were closing as fatigue and pain had worn him.

'Hey, just a second before you fall asleep!' I raised my voice. 'What about your chip?'

'Your rosette,' he whispered through the overwhelming drowse. 'Hold it to the chip, then download…' His head bent to Chi-Zeta's shoulder.

I pulled out the rosette and the dataslate. The connection was weak, less than one per cent of the data in a couple minutes, so I left the download in the 'active' status and put both things back to deal with the information in our rooms.

'Fluffster.' I caught the cricetid by the paw. 'I bet you know what the crap is happening.'

'There are things more ancient than human lore,' he answered reluctantly.

'Did you discover anything strange or creepy in the shaft?' I asked Chi-Zeta.

'The data seem to contradict the usual excavation pattern. There were many inconsistencies as if the machinery had been exposed to radiation. But the only excavated piece from the nethermost area was peculated by the sorcerer you are pursuing. Other samples were destroyed by the xenos-inflicted disruption.'

'The marines surely went bonkers.'

'This colloquial expression is the exact description of their preferred behavioural patterns. They name themselves devoted adepts of the Machine Cult but their reaction does not comply with the ways of the Omnissiah. They lack equanimity and place personal antipathies before the importance of knowledge.' His inset speakers were unable to modulate emotions but his dislike for rash actions seemed sincere.

'They try to turn themselves into machines but even their machines adopt their spiteful character,' Aphedron said. 'It has got even worse since the years when we fought side by side.'

'Organism and machine, both have spirit,' Chi-Zeta argued. 'Intemperance damages both. The Land-Behemoth of Clan Vurgaan is renowned for its malicious temper but the Clan does not bother to pacify it, feeding it xenotech and other impure trophies instead.'

Corridors crossed and twisted through the ruins until we stopped before a solid wall of rockcrete. The Hrud threw their fusils behind their backs and started climbing, their limbs bending in all directions under the robes as they flickered from ledge to ledge. Chi-Zeta followed them holding the acolyte in place with his mechadendrites. I shrugged my shoulders and put my foot on the lowest ledge trying to reach for a piece of reinforcement bar that stuck out over my head.

Aphedron shook his head and gave me his hand. 'That's what jump packs are for.'

Like many times with my old crew, I grabbed his forearms. The engine roared. The darkness above rushed down on us. I blinked, and a moment later my boots thudded on pavement plates. I leaned over to look at Fluffster and Imudon crawling up metre after metre.

The Hrud huddled up in a narrow passage squeaking. I touched Dawnspark's mind.

'Is it nearby?'

'Right there, human. We won't go far inside. The Elders are roused by the waking abyss. Some call for a peh-ha, a great journey to leave the system, some are drawn by the voice of the cold death.'

The acolyte woke up in Chi-Zeta's grip. He tapped his finger on my shoulder. 'I told you about the curse, Inquisitor. Dawnspark's people take it as a sign of great change coming. They believe temptations and dangers are harbingers of raheed-skeh, the final reunion of their tribes to find new worlds under bright suns. Or, as many think, the sure signs of the Great Reckoning, the time to die.'

'He who lingers calls to us.' Dawnspark's aura calmed down, his psychic voice was but a whisper. 'But many prefer listening to the abyss instead. To hurl themselves down into the cold murk to fall asleep forever.'

'Who's the one who lingers?' I asked him.

'The one of the Slah-haii who still remembers us cherishing old memories in a tower beyond the material world. The Red-handed speaks to the First only, the Jester, the laughing twin of the Lingering One, chooses whom to talk to for his own obscure goals.'

A tower of memories Scalaria had found to hide from the horrors of sorcery. A soft sad voice who had spoken to me in the blackstone quarry.

I walked up to Fluffster who was shaking dust off his fur on the edge. 'These are all Old Ones who remained alive. The Lingering One, the Great Fool.'

'I doubt they can be killed. They've existed in the universe since its first seconds.'

'We have to set off for the tower,' said Dawnspark. 'To find the way among the visions stored in the Lingering One's chambers.'

Warm yellowish lights were glowing ahead in the distant end of the passage. The juunlak occupied a former hab-block of the town, rooms connected with bunches of cables and pyramids of weird machinery assembled from all kinds of spare parts. Tiny lamps in the windows shone like marshland wisps through the distortion haze that veiled the junk-town.

'These lamps are the memory of our ancient sun.' Dawnspark slipped between soot-covered walls to a half-ruined stairway gallery that led to the upper blocks. There were many soul-lights of juunlak dwellers sparkling inside the rooms, their psychic voices rustled around like falling leaves. Gusts of wind brought eerie subtle smells from the districts, and the acolyte drew in the air, looking right and left.

'If you live here for long enough, the trails turn into a living map and a news bulletin,' he said to my surprised stare.

'There are no borderlines or wards around the town,' I said as we were climbing the stairs.

'The streets react to the intentions of those who come in. The mind-eyes watch the newcomers. If any dares to attack, the walls will fight them.'

When we stopped by a low arch leading to a small living room, I noticed miniature fusil muzzles hidden in the metal tangles of wall constructions. The inside of the room, dimly lit by a wall garland of tiny lamps, was packed with scrap-metal and crude-looking makeshift machines. In the corner of the improvised workshop there was a sleeping berth made of plastic and rags.

Dawnspark laid down his fusil and took off his hood. His large eyes looked even bigger with mask-like dark grey circles on his thick silvery fur. He laid back his rounded ears and exchanged nods with Chi-Zeta, and the ranger got down to one knee to put the acolyte in the berth.

'The healers will treat him once you leave,' Dawnspark sent me.

Fluffster squeaked a phrase in the aliens' tongue. The Hrud answered with a cacophony of anxious chirps but Dawnspark rushed up to the ceiling in silence. On the top he hung down holding to the metal frame of a buzzing machine with one foot and opened a small glowing window. He hurled something at Fluffster, and the cricetid caught it in mid-air.

'The pieces I showed to the Elders,' I heard Dawnspark's mind-voice at once. 'They will hold a council to decide whether to leave the planet.'

I looked out of a crumbling window to the quiet street where swift shadows of juunlak dwellers flitted from door to door. Machine noises were coming from behind the walls, tools scraped on metal.

Fluffster touched my hand. 'Let's say goodbye to the hosts.'

I raised my eyebrows. 'That's all?'

'Strangers aren't welcome in juunlaks for long. There will be other days when we can have a look at the life of the Nocturnal Warriors.'

'I need to ask more about the danger underneath.'

'The bits in this box will tell us everything we need to know.'

I turned to Dawnspark who was taking toolcases from under the machines. 'Thank you for your trust. We will examine the place.'

He flinched. 'Take care. Take care. The cold death is luring souls to the abyss.'

Fluffster squeaked again. Dawnspark's eyes widened even more but he nodded after a pause. I glimpsed at the acolyte who had fallen asleep with a rag bandage over his wound and followed the marines out to the stairway.

Down at the foot of the giant wall I finally asked Fluffster, 'Wonder why we had to take the entire crew along. There are no monsters for the marines to fight in the passages.'

'You'll see.' He strode at the head with Chi-Zeta by his side, clutching the box. Though the Alpha had already taken out one of his containers, Fluffster only shook his head.

I looked at his paws so similar to the tenacious Hrud limbs. 'After seeing the xenos' true outlook, I can guess where you found the material for your new body.'

He chuckled. 'I'm not that eccentric. It's just the image of ancient Terran rodents that lived in deserts and steppes before the Dark Age of Technology.'

I looked at the minimap of my dataslate. The application traced our route back to the living blocks. We had five hours ahead to be back by the afternoon and pacify the Iron Hands who hadn't suspected anything yet. Once we're close to the camp, I shall erase the data from our trip to avoid further problems with the furious marines.

Worn by hours of walking, we stopped for a respite among petrified trees of an ancient park. I sat down on a boulder and unscrewed the cap of my flask. Fluffster was spinning the box in his paws with nervous moves I hadn't noticed in him earlier.

'You know what it is,' I said.

He sighed. 'The thing wrecked quite a lot in the place I come from. Luckily, I had already left it for my service to the Emperor.'

The box was cold to the touch, and pale glow oozed through the solid metal.

'Aren't you afraid the malignant aura will escape the case?'

'The Hrud tribes keep the storage technology since the Old War. Scavengers they might seem to an outsider but they assemble wonders from scrap they gather in underhives and ruins.'

My vox bleeped. I put the flask down by my feet and pressed on the bead.

'Ma'am, I hope you're not too far away from the camp,' Tetraodon spoke a bit quicker than usually, distant rumble and bellowing in the background.

My heart sank with feeling of a disaster about to happen. 'The horror buried in the shaft. It has broken through the debris.'

'Just as obnoxious,' he grunted. 'Good you've taken Chi-Zeta along. Verrox is on the rampage for half an hour running around.'

'We've got three hours till the afternoon.' I clenched my jaws.

'He just can't stay put. Arothron's trying to reason with him but it's a lost cause. Take care and head right to my lab. Verrox is a loose cannon but not dumb enough to jump on my Skitarii.'

I closed my eyes and hung up. Imudon put his hand on my shoulder. ' You're white as a sheet. What's up?'

'We're late. The Iron Hands are already nuts.'

'So we'll be of use though you doubted it.' Aphedron hurled up three kineblades and caught them one by one.

'The Carcharodons have a better temper.' I looked at Fluffster and Chi-Zeta talking in the binary. 'At least Fluffster's status is a warranty of safety.'

Fluffster turned to me when he heard his name. 'Not always. The Iron Hands, with their painful hubris, are a piece of the Old Night themselves. The Gorgon tried to beat some sense into the clans but his early death cast a shadow quite worse than the Black Rage of the Blood Angels.'

'It's damn stupid to scandal over petty revenge with such taint right below. Obtaining the only clues was worth it.'

Before deleting the older data, I built a new route to the lab avoiding populated levels. There was a creepy feeling of distress in the plain aura of the place as we were going down the abandoned city railway tracks. My limbs got numb and lazy, my mind was fuzzy as the fatigue of a sleepless night was finally overcoming me. Shadows looked like sinister shapes of beasts slipping away to unlit corners from our flashlights. With every turn my heart skipped a beat as if lurking monsters were to leap at us from the dark but the tunnels were so quiet even footsteps pealed like thunder.

'Warn Magos Tetraodon,' Fluffster said when we entered a kilometre-long tunnel with a cracked roof. 'The lab is ten minutes away from the exit.'

Two full squads of heavily armed Skitarii met us by the collapsing end of the tunnel. They surrounded us and let Chi-Zeta forward to lead our group.

'Like we've been nabbed,' Aphedron chuckled.

'The opposite, the Magos has promised,' said Fluffster.

'The opposite would be nabbing the iron psycho but one needs big balls to dare.'

'Do you see Lord Astronotus or Lady Cichlasoma anywhere near, Aphedron?' I said.

'I'm just pissed off by the sour reputation of my folks, dear. They're no angels but everyone views the Iron Asses as innocent lambs just because their stubborn daddy got a head shorter. The metal bullies can rip my junkie folks to parts without efforts as you saw in your first mission.'

'The Phoenician's influence made the Gorgon a tad more human, I'd better say, humane,' Fluffster suddenly supported Aphedron. 'That's the irony of things. All loyal primarchs used to be way shadier than their brothers gone traitor. Recall what I said you about Horus when you had woken up from the Black Rage nightmare. Chaos has taken the best ones. Such a cruel course of events.'

Chi-Zeta walked under an arch and held his mechadendrite over the sensor screen of the lab gate. It slid open, and Verrox's roar echoed in the corridors.

'Magos, you're trying my patience! You're bloody covering the scoundrels. If not, you would let us deal with them without messing in.'

'Captain, whether the Magos is right or not, we shall not break the guest rules,' Arothron bellowed.

'The Inquisitor violated our right under his roof. He shall give her crew out for an honest trial!' Verrox slammed his fist into the lab wall so the storage cases shivered.

From behind Chi-Zeta's back I saw Marilyna and Pao huddled around Tetraodon tapping on his holograms impassively despite the Iron Hands circling him with clenched fists. Arothron noticed us first and headed to the gate before Verrox could rush out.

He passed by the Skitarii who raised their guns and stopped before me. 'Inquisitor, it's utterly dishonorable to doublecross your allies.'

I straightened up between Aphedron and Imudon. 'You were the first to break the conditions of our agreement. Is it already afternoon?'

'You think your deed would be worth redeeming if we went upstairs two hours later? We would find the cell as empty.'

'You would find the samples retrieved by the xenos from the dangerous abyss. A single man from the Ordos can be pardoned for the sake of important knowledge.'

Verrox stood in the doorway next to Arothron, his slate-grey bloodshot eyes narrowed. He bore striking resemblance to Lord Aspersum, his barbarian cousin from Terra, but he lacked Aspersum's relaxed condescension towards weaker mortals. 'Death to the xenos. Death to xenos-consorters. Fire upon their dens so that the Machine Spirit could feast on their impure belongings.'

'Death will be upon us all one day, Captain.' Tetraodon moved away from the panels reluctantly. 'I mean the thing the xenos name 'cold death' as well.'

'Those who stand in my way will die first!' Verrox clenched the hilt of his bolter.

'Captain, the Emperor, beloved by all, stated that the authority of Holy Ordos surpass every other institution in times of need,' said Fluffster.

Verrox stared into his beady eyes. 'One day your shaggy pelt will lie on my shoulders, Magos, if you dare to challenge my power. The Emperor sits on the Golden Throne on Terra, very far away, while I'm at your arm's reach. Now guess whose physical authority weighs more right now!'

'To insult a great Magos is to insult the whole Mechanicus! It's plain heresy to question the omnipotence of the Master of Mankind, the Omnissiah!' Tetraodon's voice, amplified by his speaker module, swept over the place so I covered my ears. 'Your late primarch is no more the King of Mars to command the Martians. And he was never a Malcador to tell Inquisitors what to do.'

Arothron put his gauntlet on Verrox's pauldron. 'Cool down, Captain! Emotions are a sign of weakness. No warrior of His armies should spill the blood of Throne agents in blind wrath.'

'Lord Stronos, the strongest among us, argues against turning into soulless machines,' Verrox answered in a more reserved tone, his reddened face returning to normal.

'But not to the point that we should give up reason.'

'Come in,' said Tetraodon. 'A shoot-out of underhive teens.'

Already in the lab, Fluffster and Tetraodon leaned over the box rotating in a stasis field over the cogitators. My fingers trembling, I grabbed a cup of tea a servo-drone had placed on the table before me and opened the archive downloaded to my dataslate.

Arothron sat next to me despite Imudon's glare. 'Where's the captive?'

'The Hrud have taken him away. But I managed to copy the archive from his chip. It took most of the card memory. You may use the data if Lord Crinitus and Magos Tetraodon allow you.'

'The xenos already know we're to wage war on them.'

'They're going to leave the sector anyway.'

'Between us.' Arothron squinted at Verrox who was browsing a security system cogitator. 'You should avoid angering the Captain in future. He's wrathful and unforgiving.'

'Lord Crinitus has some knowledge of the 'cold death'. We would have caught unawares if Captain Verrox destroyed the juunlak with the clues. You would have lost many men for a grudge.'

Arothron crooked his lips. 'That's Medusa where the strongest survivors are honoured above all. But if the acolyte let us see his chip…'

'Sorry, Father,' I interrupted him. 'There's no crying over spilt milk. Let's wait for the conclusion of the Magi's investigation.'

In the warmth of the lab it was hard to keep my eyes open. I made another sip and sat back watching the shifting holograms. Arothron got up and silently joined Verrox. They were looking for the Hrud in the records, I thought but couldn't concentrate even on the archive files I had just opened.

'Let us see you to the rooms.' Imudon picked up my dataslate that slipped down to the floor and put it into my pouch.

'There were cases when I spent three or four nights in a row pondering over clues and reports,' I said with a smile. 'Magos Tetraodon surely has necessary chemicals. Most Inquisitors take them in tons.'

'You can't live on drugs forever.'

Aphedron, his helmet under his arm, glanced at Arothron and stroked the hilt of his sword with a grin of contempt. 'I dare them to take revenge for Isstvan. Their nutty predecessors made a scarecrow from their sire's remains, and it was still a better ruler than those wildlings of Medusa.'

'They were the closest brethren to the Emperor's Children before the treason,' said Imudon.

'I preferred the take-it-easy garbagers from the Luna Wolves.'

Five Skitarii followed us out of the room. The slumber got so heavy I staggered and tripped on the threshold of the elevator when we arrived to the level of living blocks. The room felt chilly despite the heating systems turned to the max but I flopped on the cot right on stepping in. To fall asleep without dreams, a quiet voice whispered inside my mind as nothing remained but darkness.


	37. Episode 5 Chapter 3

A voice broke through the quiet murk that had blanketed me resting at the bottom of an ice-cold black sea. Short of breath in the depths, I couldn't move a finger. I opened one eye, a pit in my stomach at a dull pain in the temples and the midriff, as the voice called louder. It would have been hangover if I had drunk more than a few sips on the way back. Despite all efforts, the drowsy brain refused to give out anything else about the place I was in, the place I had probably visited.

'Who's there?' I wheezed out, my fingers wandering over the wall in a vain hope to find the switch.

A ceiling lamp lit over the door, and I covered my eyes. Someone made a few steps towards my cot.

'Volentia, you've slept for nearly two days.' Imudon. I took my palm off my face narrowing my sore eyes at the light. 'Magos Tetraodon has prepared a digest of investigation data for you but Fluffster said you needed rest. Your boots and carapace are in the wall locker, Tetraodon's servitors took care of that.'

'Two damn days.' I sat up on my cot. 'Did the Iron Hands try to attack us?' My whole body ached, numb muscles barely obeyed me.

'They're captivated by the abyss. Verrox is nuts with the idea of breaking through the debris to see it with his own eyes. Their legion's ancient obsession with both death and undeath. They've had a Siege Dreadnought teleported from the orbit to blow the mounds of rubble on their way.'

'Let's join them,' I said as firmly as my weakened voice let me. 'There must be more threads that lead to the sorcerer.'

'As far as I'm familiar with that kind of abomination, the wisest would be to abandon this planet, system and sub-sector for good.'

I put one foot on the floor but had to grab the wall locker so as not to tumble over. 'I gave up booze a while ago but still got the worst hangover in ages after a couple sips.'

'The cursed place,' he grunted. 'You've got half an hour to freshen up and come to the lab lest you be late to the party. I and Aphedron will wait for you in the corridor.'

'It's alright.' I waved my hand. 'I won't keep you while I'm that damn slow.'

'It would be reckless to walk these pathways alone. Since the tainted pieces left the Hrud case, everything goes awry for the horror buried down there. Even the staunch metal soldiers from Chi-Zeta's band are slow as flies in late autumn.'

When he left, I sat down on a chair rubbing my eyes, then took a deep breath and got back to my feet. After a quick shower I found fresh clothes in the locker. The flask on my belt was still half-full but I emptied it into the sink. The very smell of strong booze made my bowels shrivel.

As the elevator was finally rocking its way down to the lab, I pressed myself to the wall watching the marines with envy of their augmented biology. Aphedron was whistling a jolly tune, Imudon stood concentrated and stern, his arms crossed.

'What a miracle of biology.' I pulled a wry smile.

'With your mark, you still feel better than the Iron Hands,' Imudon snapped. 'I heard much from the First Acolyte when I was a Dark Apostle in the shrine of Chaos.'

'Don't you talk of him here.'

'The thing down there is just as foul. It is his unloved relative in a manner of speaking…''

We found Magos Tetraodon on his usual place in the lab. He was telling something in the binary to Marilyna and Pao who were staring at the glowing pieces of rock spinning slowly in a stasis field. Both in the very beginning of their augmentation, they both wore protective suits with face masks and wards drawn all over.

I stepped back. 'Magos, do you have a spare suit?'

He blinked his coloured eye lenses. 'Nice to see you again, Inquisitor. You won't need one as long as you're not taking it out. Sadly, even the stasis field doesn't fully contain the entropic influence.'

'Is it connected to time-warping powers of the Hrud?' I stared at the pieces, nothing really remarkable but still familiar. An eternity ago, my foster parents would browse countless reports from their field research teams in their cabinet on the third floor. In the last winter, there were many picts of similar glowing small shards but they surely didn't tell me more about the matter.

'I doubt that. The Hrud can accelerate time or, though with more effort, reverse it for a limited area but these pieces only amplify natural entropy to the point it's nigh impossible to undo its consequences. Pao, you stand closer to the cases, bring us the latest samples.'

The tech-adept unfurled his back mechadendrite and pulled out the top drawer. He grabbed a large sealed case and put it on the working table next to the stasis field projector. The lid opened up once I held the rosette over the sensor screen. Inside there were smaller transparent containers with pieces of metal, rockcrete and plastic.

Tetraodon took out a container with a metal splinter that looked molten. 'Look, my lady, it is our standard sustainable alloy with a specially designed crystal structure, reliable and hardy. I have exposed it to the pieces for 45 seconds. The whole sample became amorphous, like silicate glass, the crystal structure destroyed. The alloy undergoes such transformation at temperatures higher than 2000 degrees. And slower, of course.'

I scratched the back of my head. Aphedron flinched as if his teeth ached. 'Mechanicus gibberish, my ass.'

'Did the sample produce any heat during the transformation?' asked Imudon.

Tetraodon nodded. 'A very reasonable question, sir! There was a small yet steady rise of temperature during the exposure .'

'It was the release of the energy contained in the crystal structure, when the sample went to the lowest energy level possible. From order to chaos, the most basic law of physics,' said Imudon. Aphedron groaned and rolled his eyes in bitter despair.

Tetraodon nodded to us and took a container with crumbling plastic. 'This is even more impressive. It is a simple general purpose plastic. The sample crumbled under the influence of that thing. The damage to the polymer structure is very similar to the effect of extremely strong ionizing radiation, but much faster. We tried to recycle the original structures from the molecules but they cannot recover their cohesion due to a wild change of their quantum uncertainty. The atoms, most certainly their constituent quarks, or maybe gluons were tagged by it. It stands directly against the most basic laws of quantum mechanics.'

I frowned, my brain too slow to catch a tenth of his information flood. While he was speaking the last phrase, Fluffster entered the lab through the other door with Arothron by his side.

'You shall explain all these clever words to me during the next warp flight,' I told Fluffster when he walked up to the table.

He chuckled. 'It takes centuries even for many renowned Magi to fully understand these matters. And you're asking for a few minutes.'

'The Omnissiah knows everything, great Archmagi know three quarters, we weaker brains have to settle for less than a half,' Tetraodon picked up his jovial tone.

Marilyna giggled through the mask, Pao looked down at the samples. Only Arothron just shook his head. 'Venerable Adepta, I am sorry to interrupt your talk of wisdom but the sooner we see the place with our own eyes, the better. Ancient Ephippion in full battle readiness has descended to the lowest intact level with Captain Verrox and a veteran squad.'

'Brother, I warned you yesterday that we should agree on the exact time with Lady Volentia and her team.'

'I doubt anyone except us should take such risks,' Arothron said.

Tetraodon imitated a cough. 'Well, the only one who has the official rank of Explorator…'

'That place is vital for the current case,' I said quickly. 'Magos Tetraodon has got hazmat suits if you're worried about our equipment.'

'My lady, let me offer you a lunch before we depart,' said Tetraodon. 'Then we'll dress you up.'

The sickness only getting worse, I forced a few spoonfuls of stew down my throat and put my fork aside. 'Magos, I'd prefer a good old stim pack.'

'You need a health checkup. A second, I'll call…' he started.

I winced. 'Sorry, Magos, I'm totally fine, just to be on the safe side on the way.'

'Please eat, my lady, don't be upset. There are other lunch menus available if you don't like this one.'

I swallowed another spoonful. 'Thank you, I'm just not too hungry. But still, I'd like to take a stim pack or two with me.'

'I'll have them placed into a pocket of your suit. Don't hurry, you've got half an hour until we leave.'

Cold was leaking from the unlit bottom of the shaft as we were going down in Tetraodon's explorator shuttle packed with reconnaissance automata. Dressed in a reinforced hazmat suit designed for death worlds and warp-polluted areas, I stood before the oculus watching the remains of mining platforms slip by. Behind my back Chi-Zeta and ten of his Skitarii were checking up generators of plasma cannons. The three marines had gone to the cabin with Fluffster to browse the augur data.

'Have the Iron Hands already started drilling?' I asked Chi-Zeta.

'Ancient Ephippion has located a partially intact passage to the core of this district.' Chi-Zeta tapped on a control screen beside the oculus, and a block lit green on the holographic map. 'It was a factory precinct with mining zones and storage chambers when the city was alive. Local automatic plants manufactured objects of urban infrastructure for the whole system or maybe sub-sector, so they maybe had constructed the STC retrieved by our expedition. Magos Tetraodon presumes miners uncovered an anomaly that could be the reason behind the demolition of the city. Magos Fluffster proposed that the anomaly could been brought from a particularly ill-fated expedition and the ancient scientists have failed to contain it. It matters little now who of the two esteemed Adepts is right though.'

An unnaturally freezing wind pierced me through the bones despite the climate control systems of the suit and the ship working perfectly. I shivered and moved closer to the engines.

'Augmented bodies are presumed to lack sensibility to temperature fluctuations but for phenomena of obscure nature like this one,' said Chi-Zeta, his limbs moving as awkwardly as if he had been struck by a machine virus or a strange disease.

Even the suit got heavy and hard to move in. I took my new melta gun borrowed from Tetraodon's armoury from behind my back to check the batteries. More to reassure myself, as the place didn't seem to have life or unlife of any kind but illusions conjured by our worn minds.

The stifling presence didn't let me go despite the emptiness on augur screens that still showed a green level of safety. If tiny pieces could distort the very structure of materials without outbursts of radiation and temperature surges, the cold death itself would make our shuttle and our bodies dissipate to atoms if not quarks.

'Chi-Zeta, do you have warp-sensitive augurs on board?' I asked the Alpha.

'You may see the data in the bottom right corner of the middle screen, ma'am.' Optimistic serenity, like on the other parts of the screen.

A hundred meters lower, white noise started mixing in to the readings. Numbers fluctuated, outlines filmed by cameras got blurred. The wind seemed to blow from all directions at once. I pressed my hand to the shuttle wall that was shivering as if excited by a matching acoustic frequency from the outside.

Muffled by the white noise, a husky voice shouted from the screen speakers, 'Magos, are you there? Sick and tired of hanging around waiting for you! Brother Ephippion has rammed through the debris to fight our way to the cursed heart of this place.'

Arothron's steps thudded in the cabin. He strode out to the closest control screen and slapped on the surface. 'Captain, Magos Tetraodon is busy studying the anomaly. Three hundred metres left to your location.'

'Watch out for the foul xenos.'

'Magos has reassured me they do not threaten us now.'

Last lamplight died out as we passed by the lowest rebuilt platform. The shuttle was moving through the dark until it stopped right before a giant breach in the charred wall surrounded with piles of rubble and twisted metal. This block had been damaged by a thermonuclear weapon. The ancient masters of this planet were desperate in their attempts to stop the reckoning.

The platform I walked out on had been fixed here a few hours ago but it was already molten and bent on the edges. Tetraodon and Fluffster stopped by a debris pile, discussing the data on their wrist-mounted screens, then moved to the center to compare their measurements.

Verrox appeared from the breach, his black armour covered with a thin layer of frost. 'Haul your asses in before the whole damn thing falls down to hell.'

'The abyss is so cold you're in snow from head to toe, Captain,' I said, my fingers already stiff inside the suit gloves.

'The air is too dry for frost, ma'am,' said Tetraodon. 'This is glass dust. Very fine one.'

Verrox pointed at vans Chi-Zeta had driven out of the shuttle. 'Bad news - gotta hoof it. The tunnel might collapse if you get in with your machinery and vehicles.'

'Curious.' Tetraodon scrolled down a long column of symbols on his screen. 'Chi-Zeta, let's take out three explorator automata with enforced containers.'

Verrox and Fluffster turned their heads towards each other but both stayed silent. Arothron walked in first, guns on his mechadendrites aimed at the dark before us.

It was a vast tunnel for cargo transports that led down to the ruined factory workshops where the explorator team had found the STC. Some sections of the vault were missing, shreds of ravaged cables hung from the walls. Flashlight beams slipped across glossy flows on the road surface that looked a flood of solid lava in a cave.

My vox hissed and cracked even when I turned the volume down to the minimum. The systems of my suit reacted to commands with an irritating lag, my dataslate froze with a black screen. I speeded up to overtake Aphedron and Imudon who led our group a few steps behind the Iron Hands.

Beeps broke through the white noise. My vox connected to the marines' channel. All I heard was the same jolly tune Aphedron had been whistling since we had left the rooms.

'Shut the heck up, whore-snake's golden boy!' Verrox roared a few turns later. 'Is this a damn park stroll?'

Aphedron gave out a laugh but then whistled even louder. I smiled under the visor as the overwhelming presence ceded for a moment. Already tired of walking in the suit turned strangely cumbersome, I walked on whispering litanies, my breath strained, slow beats of my heart echoed like thunder in my head. Thin glass dust settled on our armour and garbs, sparkling in the lamplight, scratching weird senseless and chaotic pictures on our visors.

'There'll be a ruined section a kilometre away from here,' said Verrox. 'Brother Ephippion is there dealing with the rubble.'

'A dreadnought weighs as much as a full van,' Imudon grunted. 'You should have borrowed lighter equipment from Magos Tetraodon.'

Verrox gave out a croaking chuckle. 'Sons of Medusa praise not only the strong, but the lucky. Those doomed to fall will either die or struggle to get back to battle by any means.'

'Magos Tetraodon would have objected against an urgent expedition if he was to decide,' Arothron said through gritted teeth.

The tunnel turned left, and the massive hull of the dreadnought showed up in the end, a black crag frozen in pale radiance that seeped through a narrow passage cleared through debris. My breath stopped at a gust of unnatural chill.

Verrox grabbed his bolter with a brisk gesture that betrayed anxiety I hadn't seen in the staunch Clan warriors before. 'Death. It reeks of death like the forbidden vaults of Medusa. Death alone reigned over Medusa in the Old Night, worshipped as a goddess that had power over the strongest. Her gift and cure was the biggest treasure even our sire didn't dare to destroy, if he was ever able to.'

'Even foulmouths like you learned some words of poetry for the old bonds with the Third,' Aphedron said with more surprise than mockery.

'Keys of Hel, the fires from the mountain, banned until the darkest days, named after the image of Death venerated by our forefathers.' Verrox ignored the heckle, unlike his earlier bouts of anger for every petty joke or objection. His aura felt deadly cold, and I could swear it was fear that overwhelmed him.

'Death has no name.' Imudon's voice was low and dull.

'People give names to every thing under the sky, trying to get power over it,' said Arothron. 'Our tribes coined the name of Hel, Fenris and Caliban whispered about the Erlking who rules over barren snow and dead wood.'

'The latter is familiar to me,' Imudon said after a pause, and I heard a short click. He disconnected from the channel.

'Death is stronger than any warrior,' Verrox wheezed out. 'The Ghola don't fear her presence anymore.'

'Does the term Maletek Incarna mean anything to you, Captain?' Fluffster's voice suddenly joined the talk.

'Power is over any law, Magos. The Agesian Protocols, the Sarcosan Formulae let the fallen come back as the Ghola, the Revenants as you call them. Come back again and again.'

'An existence as bleak as frightening,' Arothron objected. 'An unlife our gene-sire shunned. The Ghola turn slower and weaker every time they emerge from their cryo-stasis tanks, their memories and their souls leaking out despite their efforts to stay among the living.'

'Father, you would speak against emotions and lack of discipline,' I said. 'But there's something that makes the most devoted fan of machinery and cyborgs cringe.'

'This is not a joke, Inquisitor. Voluntary self-discipline of emotions forges a warrior, but death leaves but a mindless husk behind.'

He stepped into the pale glow and walked up to the motionless dreadnought first. The war machine stood with its limbs drooping, only the scroll with the Ancient's name fluttering in the draught. I heard a few brief questions in the binary. Nine black-clad tactical marines hobbled out of the passage, their movements clumsy as if they were dead drunk. In a second the channel buzzed with binary remarks and orders mixed with the white noise.

I caught Fluffster who headed to the dreadnought by the paw. 'Are they wounded or sick?'

'Their armour is. How ironic, the best relic machinery goes batshit crazy but meat sacks despised by the Iron Hands are better resistant to the corruption. Metal is frozen and brittle yet the flesh inside is aware if a little confused. And frightened.'

'What will happen to Brother Ephippion if they won't be able to make him move again?' I stopped behind Arothron and Fluffster, watching them tinker with the dreadnought's system.

Magos Tetraodon downloaded the report from Ephippion's augurs and only shook his head. 'I wish I knew how to haul the old man back if his teleport homer can't be repaired.'

'None of your damn business,' Verrox cussed for the first time since the irrational fear had struck him.

The unlight enveloped us, every piece of rockcrete and metal in the rubble glowing. The fine dust of glass in the empty air began to slowly dance.

'Like white phosphorus,' I said.

'Like a damaged nuclear reactor,' Arothron snapped.

Ephippion moved his gun and drill and made a heavy step forward. The surface shuddered, molten rock cracked under his giant metal feet. Both the marines and the Skitarii raised their weapons. Tetraodon's automata took their places right behind the dreadnought, ready to dig into the bowels of the dead city.

The passage was so narrow the dreadnought's shoulders brushed against the trembling walls. I walked in middle of the line between Imudon and Fluffster. When I tried to glimpse at the end of the passage from behind Imudon's back, all I could see were the bulky shapes of marines drowning in the glow. Aphedron was still whistling the tune but no one reacted, the Iron Hands marching forward with machine synchrony in complete silence. My psychic sight was as clumsy as the other senses deafened by the chill. I held on for about a kilometre, but then put my hand on the pouch as if to check the contents. My fingers found the shard.

There was a loud thrumming in my ears on the verge of pain, a wave of vertigo struck me but the psychic concentration got eerily sharp. All shapes showed up through the glow as my glance slipped over the marines and automata to the blocked corridors where Ephippion was wrestling his way through chunks of molten rock. The explosion hadn't reached this area but Tetraodon's mines had collapsed, the ancient buildings distorted by the power resting deep below.

Outside of my body, I felt its cold, its viscous still that enveloped us all in drowse. The slumber without dreams that lured the Hrud to their death.

A shrill bleep in the vox pulled me back. The shard slipped out of my hands to the bottom of the pouch.

'Inquisitor, take care,' Magos Tetraodon's voice spoke to me. 'The vibrations in the walls and vaults near the entrance have reached a critical level. Looks like the explosion broke the integrity of already old and decayed constructions. Until now, the condition seemed more reliable. As if our arrival has speeded up the process.'

'Will Brother Ephippion be able to clear a passage back to the shuttle?'

'It's optimistic to think the shuttle will survive the collapse.' He paused. 'But I must warn you now. Our machinery will go pear-shaped if exposed to the taint for too long. I'd advise to turn back right now.'

'Are you worth the name of Explorator, Magos?' Verrox gave out a husky growl. 'We will march on until we see the cold death with our own eyes.'

I looked back at Fluffster but he only shook his head. I wasn't sure whether to join Tetraodon and leave or find out more about the eerie thing that had its role in the mess I had fallen into. I didn't have a tenth of my late mentor's curiosity for strange things but the psychic flight had awakened a shadow of old memories I couldn't grasp. Maybe just a reminiscence of those old picts that could be a mere coincidence yet there were many loose ends in my past I should unravel.

The column stopped. I nearly bumped into Imudon's back plate.

'Stop! No movements!' said Tetraodon.

Before he could finish the phrase, the corridor shivered. A wave of dust blew through the passage and veiled us in sparkling haze.

'Worse than the augurs signalled,' Pao's faint voice whispered.

'The whole tunnel. Our shuttle. Two levels of mining platforms,' Marilyna said quietly.

'A totally malicious phenomenon of an unknown nature, adepts,' said Tetraodon. 'But keep in mind the Machine God's teachings and keep your chins up. Some Explorators lose everything to calamities they try to study but the Quest for Knowledge is above everything we possess.'

'Stay here and don't move,' Fluffster ordered. 'Especially you, Captain.'

Verrox didn't answer.

I pulled Imudon by the hand. 'What's up his sleeve for today?'

'If I tell you, someone starts shooting around.'

Minutes passed in waiting. I sat down on a big lump of plastic, feeling too lazy to look for the shard for another psychic scouting trip. My mind had already used to the even, dull background noise that reminded me of winter winds howling in chimneys of upper floors I had listened to in my dormitory bed in the orphanage.

The stale warp rippled. A warm breeze caressed my face under the visor, the chilly presence faded.

Tetraodon broke the silence. 'Unbelievable.'

'It's written in xenology books but rarely observed by humans,' Fluffster answered. When I got up to my feet, he pointed at his wrist screen. Two screenshots taken a minute and a second earlier. The red ruined section that had expanded up to the rebuilt platforms had turned green.

'You've summoned the Hrud,' I said.

'That was the deal, Volentia. Dawnspark and his band will go down to gather more evidence for the Elders but they had to pluck up their joint psychic strength to restore the passages to their condition prior to the explosion.'

'Usually, they prefer spoiling things instead,' Arothron grunted.

'Reversing time for a chosen object needs more efforts,' said Fluffster. 'But they'll undo the effect once we're out.'

'You want them to hang around within my bolter range,' said Verrox. 'A foul joke, Magos.'

'The cold death is stronger than any warrior, xenos or not,' Arothron answered before Fluffster. 'Today, we battle death.'

Small, agile Hrud slipped between Skitarii and marines, only their tiny hands and glowing eyes showing from under their ragged cloaks, fusils rocking behind their backs. The Iron Hands froze up gripping their weapons but the xenos ignored them. They surrounded Fluffster exchanging excited chirps and squeaks. One Hrud bowed their head to me.

'Hello, human wanderer. That's me, Dawnspark.'

I gave him my hand, and his thin fingers shook it lightly.

'Tell me more about cold death, Dawnspark. I can swear I came across it once in my old life.'

'No, no, no,' his voice squeaked in my head. 'The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the stronger it calls you. My kind fears the old curse.'

Ephippion stamped his giant foot on the surface. A blizzard of billowing dust enveloped his black hull. Our column turned the corner to a steep slide under a low vault of metal constructs and cables fused shut. My eyes sore from the glow, I still managed to take a few glimpses of a vast chamber underneath through breaches in corroded metal. The vertigo going worse, I snatched the stim-pack and unzipped the suit on the neck. The numb neck didn't feel the needle's sting but my blood boiled with energy. I took a deep breath and hurried forward.

'It's where we discovered the STC. The big storage, why it is much worse now?' said Tetraodon.

'Did you see the glow?' I asked him.

'The anomalies, quite moderate at that time, were registered by the automata at the bottom of the shaft. It seems to have expanded. Because of us?'

Something flickered in the end of the slide on the edge of my vision. My hands found the melta gun. Bolter shots boomed like thunderbolts. My foot nearly slipped through a hole as I jumped to the wall to take cover behind a molten ledge.

'What the…' I took aim but all I could see were the Iron Hands in yellow glints of bolter fire.

The Hrud, chirping at feverishly high pitches, rushed forward with fusils in hands. Behind my back the Skitarii opened fire. A heavy aura fell over us blinding my psyker-sight. There had been no living souls or even Neverborn ever noticed in the depths, Magos Tetraodon had ensured me. The augurs had been silent.

A movement by the opposite wall caught my eye. A sickly thin hand stuck out of a large breach between former columns. Incredibly swift, a pale shadow slipped out. It dodged my melta blast that vaporized a bundle of fused cables instead. Three more appeared from the passageways below, to my left and to my right. Walking mummies dried to the point they looked like sticks glued together in human figures. Their whitish faces turned to me, dark holes in the place of their eyes, mouths sewn shut. Struggling with suppressing weakness, I clasped the gun.

The closest mummy reached for me. An arc discharge sparked between its outstretched hand and my shoulder. The surface of my suit got charred but I jumped back and pulled the trigger. It folded in two in the cloud of plasma. There was a muffled clap. The fire died out at once, and the mummy dissolved. I ran up staggering on my numbed feet as two more were chasing me. Under their steps the slide started shaking as if about to fall apart.

'To the right!' I heard Imudon's voice. A bolter hit ripped one of the mummies in two. The upper half crawled towards me but I put it to rest with another melta blast. As I aimed for the next shot, two remaining mummies turned to a bunch of sticks slithering in glass dust. I destroyed them and pressed myself against a solid section of the wall looking around.

Fluffster was fighting against a dozen mummies at once, the bright ray of his volkite gun sending them back to nowhere before they could reach him. Some Skitarii gathered around Magos Tetraodon already had their limbs damaged by arc discharges but their joint fire still kept the foes advancing in numbers at bay. Marilyna and Pao gripped their melta guns with shivering hands, only peeping out from behind their mentor's back to fire a blast. A few Hrud hurried up to help them.

'The victims of this curse,' I whispered the guess.

'No, they have crumbled to dust long aho. These are mere doppelgangers, a foul mockery.' Imudon objected. 'More will come back from the abyss if we stay here for too long.' He would surely remain silent but his aura didn't show any surprise at the weird enemies. Who knows, whom he had fought in his older ventures

We joined the Mechanicus warriors that were already retreating from the enemy tide. Three mummies grabbed a Skitarius, and the air around the ranger cracked with pale discharges. A hit from a Hrud fusil left him without an arm and two mechadendrites but let him break free. I destroyed a mummy that caught another Skitarius but the vibrating surface cracked. The ranger fell through the breach.

'Fall back, Captain!' Tetraodon bellowed with all power of his speakers. 'Fall back!'

'Aphedron, are you alright?' I shouted into the vox. 'Get back to us!'

'Damn, that was annoying,' Aphedron chuckled back. 'Come get some, stick bastards!'

The first squad of the Iron Hands moved towards us. They hobbled clumsily in their suits mottled with molten patches.

'Don't get any closer!' one of them shouted. 'Machines break down… down there.'

'Are there many of them?' said Tetraodon.

'A crowd rising from below.'

Ephippion's hull was vibrating like the floor and walls of the passage. A few pieces had already fallen off, his gun was smoking. Aphedron ran past him, his movements still agile even in the jamming suit. Carrying two gravely wounded marines, the rest of the Iron Hands walked up as Verrox and Arothron covered their retreat with heavy fire.

'Gotta break through.' Tetraodon finished the closest mummies and waved his mechadendrites.

Staying close to Imudon, I followed Fluffster and the Tech-Guard who cleared the way to the mounds of rubble by the corner up the slide. A discharge hit me in the back as I ran past a wall breach. I staggered, my breath stopped. Gasping for air, I tore off the helmet and threw it into the breach. The stale cold air in my lungs made me double in a bout of coughing. A stick silhouette showed up a dozen steps ahead but I darted aside and fired. The battery indicator flickered red. Dammit. The crazy entropy would probably make the gun fall apart right in my hands with the next shot.

Only when I reached the upper passage, I slowed down to recuperate. A wave of mummies rolled over the lower half of the slide, a seething pasty mass, the gazes of their empty eye sockets locked on us.

Arothron stopped between the piles as the dreadnought walked into the passage. When the last Iron Hands reached safety, Arothron tore a grenade off his belt. Verrox took a package of explosives from his pouch and made a sign to his men.

'Blow up the slide. We're leaving.'

A thunderous blast shook the walls. The slide and the mummies disappeared in a mighty blaze. Tetraodon patted the backs of his quiet apprentices and nodded. 'We must get up as soon as possible. To dismantle the mining machinery and retreat to high orbit. And then away from this subsector. Your wise partner was right, Lady Inquisitor. I hope you'll promptly declare this place Perdita and no fool will bring this horror to Imperial soil.'


	38. Episode 5 Chapter 4

We boarded our shuttle without delay and left the shaft for Tetraodon's ship while his crew was disassembling the constructions and machines. On the way to the orbit I quickly typed a report draft to confirm the Perdita status of Cyprinus and the whole vicinity. My first time doing so, I thought downloading the report form. Let there be as few as possible reports like that, let alone the Exterminatus bombings I hadn't ordered yet, for the Emperor's mercy.

A Skitarii squad watched over the parking of our shuttle in the docks and escorted us to the bridge to wait for its busy master. While I was folding my hazmat suit, Fluffster proceeded to the astropaths' pavilion talking in binary on the way.

I saved the draft and leaned back in the chair. The ship felt as eerily quiet as the abandoned hive when most of its human dwellers were away. A shadow of a ghostly sentience slipped at the edge of my psychic vision. Most probably a stray voice from the artifact storage but I had to warn Tetraodon so that he checked our shuttle and inventory for taint. When Fluffster returns, I'll ask the astropaths about the gull they've been looking for since the day of the theft.

Imudon was walking around the augur screens watching the map of the system. 'The Hrud have just left along with the captive.'

I flinched. 'Just don't mention them before the Iron Hands. You've encountered them before.'

'Long before the Heresy. It wasn't a hostile clan like many, and they still dwell in an Imperial fortress, known under a different name by the Imperials.' He watched a small dot moving towards the border of the system. 'The colony of Cyprinus is quite small if it fit into a single Inquisitorial frigate.'

'Peculiar stealth tech then, if an Explorator Magos failed to notice it in orbit.'

'There are deep rifts on the other side left by meteorites. The largest one can dock an armada. The acolyte will drop them on a planet of their choosing and travel forth to Lord Kryptopterus' citadel.'

I scratched my temple as a sudden thought popped up. There was something in common between all three kinds of strange things without explanation I'd encountered during my career. Even four, if the grimoire mayhem counts in. The same influence over both matter and aether that isn't connected to usual manifestations of Chaos. Accidents where usual ways of combating Chaos are nearly useless.

'Don't you think there've been too many strange coincidences recently? The Macan Kumbang, the abyss, your shrine, they keep showing up wherever we go.'

'You're not the first to ponder over the problem. Ordo Obsoletus took interest in manifestations over the Ocellatus sector, and Lord Astronotus assisted their small band in sneaking into the shrine.'

'What happened to them?'

He turned back to the map. 'Ask my successor when we meet him again.'

Most activities of Ordo Obsoletus were marked 'top secret' in the Citadel Library of Uebotia, only High Inquisitors allowed full access to the data. With Fluffster's help I could hack the system but I doubted his own strategy was alright with me learning too much.

'Fluffster knows everything.'

Imudon chuckled. 'Counting his age and his best friends…'

I walked up to him. 'I'm afraid of Fluffster,' I whispered. A feeling I finally dared to share with my new crew.

'He's kind to you in his own way. At least he's not gonna dump you quickly like most of Heresy-era agents.'

Aphedron strolled closer from the other end of the bridge platform and sprawled in a large chair with his legs on the table with flash drives and spare parts. 'Isn't our brave Inquisitor afraid of too many folks? And afraid of her own men much more than of enemies?'

I squinted at his festive grin. 'You're the one in charge for reckless bravery in our team.'

'Take an example then.'

'You're fine with being a goon in the Terran team,' I said.

'As long as they let me do what I'm made for. First I felt pessimistic about the loss of my older boons but in fact I feel better after I gave up drugs and Chaos.'

'You two fought on par with the Black Legionnaires.'

He showed his flawless teeth. 'The Pansexualis you once knew wouldn't have beaten the Panther in his full glory.'

Fluffster's shadow fell over us. I pulled a forced smile.

'Magos Tetraodon will arrive in an hour,' said Fluffster. 'Volentia, the astropaths are all yours to send the report. Sadly, no news about the gull you're chasing.'

Upon the arrival Tetraodon called us to his strategium immediately. A chamber next to his main server room, the strategium had a holographic projector and three cogitator terminals in a circle of chairs. Tetraodon himself occupied a command throne before the largest terminal with a stand for data cards, his apprentices perched on chairs on both sides. Both were browsing long columns of binary script on their dataslates connected to Tetraodon's terminal.

The Iron Hands had sent Arothron who was now talking to Chi-Zeta in the corner pointing at his wristband screen. On seeing Fluffster he nodded at the Alpha and headed towards us.

'Magos, we need your knowledge to describe the anomaly properly. I hope the information is already on the way to the Fabricator-General. Between us, Captain Verrox strongly objected against notifying the high superiors but I did my best to change his mind.'

Tetraodon's speakers gave out a beep. 'Sirs and madames, I beg for a minute of your attention.'

A spider-like servitor crawled out of a hidden door with a tray of mugs. It moved along the circle on six metal legs. As I took a mug from the tray, a mechadendrite with a tap hung over the mug, and steaming recaff poured in. Another mechadendrite took a square box out of the servitor's rectangular body. Inside there was the host's favourite mix of cookies. I sipped on the recaff but before I could try the snack the projector buzzed. A holographic map of the Cyprinus system lit up in the centre.

Tetraodon cleared his throat. He still had many organic parts for his rank but it didn't seem to bother him at all. 'Enjoy the modest but fine snacks, my dear guests. Unfortunately no processed cheese in this far space, Lord Crinitus, but I hope the cheese cookies will please you.'

'All pleasures of the flesh make us weaker, Magos.' Arothron had taken off his helmet to drink recaff but refused the snacks. 'We have a particularly foul anomaly of either Chaos or xenos kind right underneath.'

Aphedron smirked at his stern face. 'Some of your Chapter's officers are rumoured to take concubines, if we talk about pleasures and weakness. Three of my legionnaires literally laughed their heads off when they heard that from a captive serf from Medusa.'

Arothron clenched his jaws, his eyes narrowed, but Tetraodon sighed and waved his mechadendrites. 'What a pity. But your apothecaries are famous for their wonderworking abilities.'

'The Lubricious patched two of them but the third one had his head regrown. I'd describe his new face in detail but we have ladies present.'

Arothron slapped his gauntlet on the control panel and bellowed, 'Back to work! Enough stupid snickering! Your legion has outlived their use.'

'Your suggestions, venerable Father.' Tetraodon picked up his mug, undisturbed by the row.

'You already know the position of the company. Bomb the surface and leave for your forge.'

'I think the lost STC is still of some value,' said Tetraodon. 'My astropaths need time to finish scouring the area for traces.'

'It is tainted for sure.'

'Sorry to agree with Father Arothron, Magos,' Chi-Zeta suddenly spoke for the Iron Father. The gull was about to slip away forever.

'So it still has value for the Inquisition,' I said in my most confident tone. 'The rules of our Ordo forbid us to neglect dangerous heresy.'

'That's why you claimed the shard of Torquetum for yourself,' Aphedron said and winked at me.

Tetraodon took a cookie from his box and paused before answering. 'Well, I'd agree with Lady Volentia. Not only the Inquisition, the Lords Dragon will as well think my report to be incomplete without the examination of the STC of such value.'

'You do not have clues yet,' said Arothron. 'Send the description to the Lords Dragon and Ordo Machinum and let them wait until the stolen relic pops up on the black market.'

'Father,' I said, 'if it's tainted, we must find it before it falls into the hands of heretics and traitors.' I looked at Fluffster, hoping he would interfere. But he sat in silence, picking cheese cookies from the pile.

'The fabled Iron Hands have lost their old famous zeal for battle,' Aphedron said mockingly. 'They're gonna run back to Medusa from a single sorcerer and his pet giant gull.'

I gave him a half-smile, and he winked again.

Arothron's face turned so red the blood glowed crimson through his swarthy skin. 'Say another word, and no one will stop me from hacking your blabbering head off your shoulders. You are weaker in combat than the clan lords of Medusa.'

'I'm so far from your passion for homicide, Father,' hummed Tetraodon.

Imudon stared at Arothron. 'Humanity won't even need traitors and xenos to get extinct if His loyal servants go on a rampage killing one another.'

I nodded. 'Father, you were the voice of reason for Captain Verrox's antics.'

Arothron's tone softened. 'For how long are you going to stay over Cyprinus?'

'First of all, we will relocate the fleet to the edge of the system where we can enter the warp immediately if the anomaly goes astray,' said Tetraodon. 'Two weeks will be enough to check all known warp routes around Cyprinus.'

Days passed even slower than during warp travels. I dropped in to Tetraodon's lab from time to time but he was too busy with the examination data to explain anything to an outsider dummy. Still I didn't feel like sitting in my room as the aura of the ship remained troubled. Warp draught wafted from small rifts here and there. Sometimes a blurred human silhouette showed up at the edge of my vision in shaded rooms but vanished once I turned my head. Screeches and creaks sounded like wails.

One day, when I stumbled upon Aphedron in the ship gym, I asked him, a fellow psyker, about the warp shenanigans.

He pulled a grimace. 'We've got a not-so-friendly ghost around.'

'Did we bring it from the surface?'

'The poor bodiless bloke has lingered here for longer, so he's probably bored by now.'

'A human spirit?'

Aphedron sniggered. 'I bet he misses his human shape. And his power too. I'm quite sure he's irritated by such humiliation.'

I flinched at a sudden rumble. Barbells had fallen down from the rack and rolled to the opposite wall.

Aphedron winked with a sigh. 'I should have made him a head shorter when I had the opportunity before the Heresy. All Diasporex bastards are scum, even my late best buddy. All sneaky and opportunistic.'

'That's… the Panther?' I gasped. 'Thought he'd become a smoke beast or a part of the Hive Mind.'

'No, just the dramatic space diver who had to give up his Techmarine job afterwards.'

A warp breeze blew into my face and faded away. Aphedron waved his hand as if to chase away a mosquito. 'Don't fear him, dear. He's as eager to make revenge on the sorcerer as you. The sorcerer had used him to find the place but then bound him to the ship so as not to share the profit.'

I rubbed my forehead. 'He might know the sorcerer's whereabouts.'

'I've already tried to catch him but he's too sneaky. You know, he was quite similar to you when we all were young. We loved to chase ladies together. Sometimes ladies were chasing us, with chainsaws and stubbers. Good were those days.'

'We have trained astropaths on board.'

'Up to you to persuade Tetraodon. He's forbidden me to get close to his lab after my latest brawl with Arothron three days ago.'

I waited until tomorrow to pay Tetraodon a visit just when he was about to send his daily request to the astropaths. Marilyna met me at the entrance with a large case of datacards and pulled a sour grimace.

'Ma'am, just to warn you, the Magos is in quite a foul mood today. The bogeyman has felled the big stand so all the drives scattered around. Worse, it fell on the projector. He's currently corrupting our diaries and logs with his rude humour.' She glimpsed back at the room and whispered, 'Pao said to the Magos he's busy with a new utility program just to get away to his room.'

'The ghost is why I'm here,' I said.

She frowned. 'The Magos' sensors will overheat with anger.'

'Who the hell is there, Marilyna?' I heard Tetraodon's grumpy voice from the lab. 'If it's not Lord Crinitus, tell them to mind their own business.'

'Lady Volentia has arrived with news for you, Magos,' said Marilyna.

'For a couple minutes, not any longer,' he answered a few seconds later.

Tetraodon didn't even turn to me from a cracked screen he was using instead of the broken holographic table.

I sat down next to him. 'Good afternoon, Magos!'

'Lady Volentia, you could have waited until the mess is at least partially cleared.'

'The obnoxious ghost…' I started.

'Just tell me right now - are you able to banish it?'

'Unfortunately not but I know who he is.'

'Do you seriously think I feel like getting acquainted with a warp scoundrel?' He reached for a plate by his side only to find it empty. 'Not my day.'

'It will give us a chance to leave this damn system for good right now. He's a daemon prince from the Black Legion, the accomplice to your thief.'

'A daemon prince? More like a petty vengeful bastard. So please go deal with him, that's what your colleagues are supposed to do,' he grumbled just as grimly.

'Personally I'm supposed to catch heretics, Magos.'

'Technically, he's a heretic as well as a lesser daemon now.'

'To put it short, may I use your astropaths to bind him?'

'You're free to do everything as long as you don't dangle yourself in front of me. But if any of my folks is seriously harmed, I'll send you to Verrox's barge with both of your buddies.'

On the way back I bumped into Fluffster who had ventured out of the ship archive at last.

'Tetraodon's so out of sorts,' I complained to him. 'Didn't expect that from a man who stayed placid when the marines were gonna tear one another to pieces.'

'The latest data suffered after a local blackout caused by the stray daemon prince. I've spent the whole day by the servers but only managed to recover less than a half by now. Serious and concentrated warp damage.'

'Have the astropaths found anything then?'

'Still nothing.'

'I'll tell the astropaths to catch and interrogate the Warpsmith's ghost.'

He nodded. 'Give it a try. You'll need that experience in future.'

The Chief Astropath was resting on his couch in the back part of the psyker quarters after downloading another portion of news. Bluish smoke of scented candles filled the quiet room, seer crystals in bowls were glimmering in the psyker-sight. When I pulled aside a heavy velvet curtain that shaded the couch, he pulled the forehead band down over his blind eyes. I quickly described the task using Tetraodon's authority as insurance.

'The choir is exhausted for today, my lady.' He took a pill case from under his pillow. 'Tomorrow we'll have to scour the warp again.'

'Let's make a break for just a day.'

'I don't guarantee immediate success. None of us has performed-daemon binding since the practice on Holy Terra.'

In the evening I downloaded the plan of the ship and found perfect spots to place astropaths in a choir that would encircle the whole vessel. Wards and warp restraints were an art too arcane for my basic education but I found a Psykana manual in the ship library with a number of illustrated patterns of magical nets.

When I showed the draft to the Chief Astropath next morning after breakfast, he made a few corrections and drew a complicated sigil over the scheme.

'It will be easier to bind him once he's in the area between our pavilion and the chapel with the strongest protective seals. But it will be harder to keep him away from the Navigator spire on the other side of the pavilion.'

I included Aphedron in the choir as Lord Mentor had had him soulbound on Terra. In theory, the shard would let me do as well as the weaker among trained astropaths but I was afraid the malignant sentience trapped within would twist the ghost for its own goals. Clan Vurgaan had a Librarian aboard their barge but the Iron Hands would surely take the initiative and banish the Warpsmith instead of capturing him for a talk.

The Chief Astropath took his place on a wraithbone-encrusted throne in the seer pavilion. He whispered a litany to concentrate, and the enchanted stones soared up floating all around. Thin silvery threads pulled out of the pavilion to weave together with the other auras into a circle of power.

First nothing happened. I peeked into his radiating mind only to see the circle shrink. Trapped within, a feeble spark of unlight was fluttering like a moth inside a lantern.

'I've never seen a daemon prince that weak,' I said.

'He's already bound, my lady,' the Chief Astropath sent back to me. 'An unknown, immensely powerful kind of sorcery. I'm afraid… we won't be able to banish him afterwards. Invisible chains won't let him go without blowing up the ship.'

'Can you at least contain him for a while?'

Instead of an answer he took a crystal vial out of a pocket of his robe.

'And then?'

'Release him in a fortified cage beside the chapel.'

The net of silvery threads was driving the ensnared wisp closer. I found Aphedron's vox channel in the list.

'Quite a belated question. Do you remember the guy's name?'

He burst out laughing. 'Well, in the old days even the Panther called him just 'that sissy'.'

The Chief Astropath coughed. 'Well, sir… Be so kind not to disrupt the choir's concentration. The ghost is almost there.'

He finished his voiceless reprimand abruptly. A warp wind swept over the room. A humanoid figure flashed in the rings of aromatic smoke. Tangled in the net, the daemon prince twitched in convulsions. Sparks scattered around but died out before they could set the room on fire.

Holding my breath, I watched the astropath's fingers open the vial and fling it into the air. The wind swished past me with a howl. There was a flash, and the net dissolved. The vial was spinning before the Chief Astropath, the daemon prince's essence glowing inside.

The Chief Astropath reached out and caught the vial. 'My lady, please wait for the last ten minutes here. We will call you in once we have completed the safety measures.'

Magos Tetraodon and Fluffster were already standing by the cage when I arrived there with both marines by my side. Built from adamantium carved with holy symbols, the cage had been out of use for a few decades, the bars and the whole chamber covered in fine dust. The confined daemon prince had taken a visible form but his aether body remained transparent and sickly thin.

'You shouldn't have provoked me, you blockhead,' Tetraodon said in his earlier relaxed tone.

Aphedron walked up to the cage and knocked on the bars. 'Hey, sissy, it's in your best interest to start talking.'

'Or what?' a mocking voice screeched in my head. 'I've already at my lowest ebb.'

'We're after the gull man,' I said. 'He's the only one who can rid you of our company.'

'He's stolen the prize I wanted for myself,' he hissed.

'Or I'll tell everyone what kinds of experiments you would do on yourself in your Diasporex youth!' Aphedron couldn't hold it in, and his snicker boomed through the chamber.

The captive spectre flinched. 'Millennia have passed but you still keep old gossip in memory.'

'Where were you heading to?' I said.

'Last Light.' As the ghost spat out the last words, his aether form blurred. He curled up in the center of the cage so as not to touch the blessed walls.

'Enough.' Fluffster tapped on his dataslate. 'Let's set the course immediately.'

They said nothing on the way to the bridge. Tetraodon gave out a few quick commands in binary, then leaned over his wristband screen, scrolling through columns of symbols on the move.

'Have you been to that place before?' I asked the marines.

Both shook their heads.

'Only heard the name in a long list of places,' Imudon said back.

When Fluffster and Tetraodon joined the ship officers beside the holographic map, I came closer watching the thin line run across the sectors. On the other end there was a spot of unpopulated space in the border area around the Eye of Terror.

'They were going to flee back to the Eye?' I said.

'Maybe, but only after picking up something else.' Fluffster zoomed in, and I saw emblems of tomb-worlds around the dot that marked the destination.

'The ghost has never been too smart in everything, including the tinkering. He has always been just a fine con man,' said Aphedron. 'And he had to brush up his repair skills only because Horus didn't need any more apothecaries.'

'There aren't many other choices.' Fluffster pointed at a strange symbol by the dot. 'Warp storms are raging within and without the Eye as the foul powers are about to puke up the traitors.'

Aphedron chuckled. 'The whore-god has hangover after a hundred centuries of guzzling.'

'A fort of pylons?' I lined up the symbol with the frame in my scanner app to find it in the manuals. 'Image recognized', a line appeared under the frame. 'Beacon of xenos origin.'

'Hence the name,' said Fluffster. 'It didn't go out for millions of years, always showing the way to fleets crossing this area. They called him Last Light during the Great War because it was the last beacon to stay lit. Then it was the last Necron outpost by the borders of the Aeldari Empire.'

'Now it's the last beacon on the way to the Eye,' said Tetraodon. 'Wonder what the Quest for Knowledge brings us next. That's the fun.'

Storms shook the ships, every standard week worse than before, as our fleet was struggling against the tainted warp. Sailing further and further from Uebotia, I got into the same trap again, fully dependent on Fluffster's strategies. I dedicated most of my free time to weapon training, only to realize I was still on the level of a mediocre hired gun with my stature and armaments. There was nothing I could offer my crew. Nothing that was of use in our times of trouble. Earlier, it had been enough for city investigations, but the coming war would rid us of civilized cities and hidden markets with poisoned candies. All candies in the remaining markets would be Chaos-poisoned.

Travelling with Fluffster was a unique experience most Inquisitors would take as a blessing but that was the way to stay a menial forever. If not, to get killed soon as the weakest member of the crew who has no authority to suggest her own plan or make the veteran soldiers respect her. If I managed to remove the mark, Fluffster would lose his interest in me. I would be free to do my job. If there are places where heretics are criminals not rulers by that time, of course.

Most of all I needed good honest advice. I didn't dare to ask Imudon or Aphedron so as not to harm my reputation even worse. Tetraodon surely knew how to live well but his condescending serenity as well as friendship with Fluffster made me feel uneasy.

When Arothron teleported to the ship for another briefing, I waited for him outside the strategium.

'Father, you count as a priest,' I said.

'May the Omnissiah direct your motion on the True Path.' He lay his right hand on my head to give a blessing.

I grabbed his gauntlet and kissed it. 'Could you take my confession after the briefing, please?'

'I know two ordained tech-priests by your side, Inquisitor.'

'There are things I feel… reluctant to tell them right now.'

He frowned. 'It is wrong to go to confession with things to conceal in mind.'

'Circumstances,' I answered vaguely. 'But it's quite urgent.'

'Fine. Wait for me in the chapel.'

The captive ghost stirred and gave out a hiss as I passed by his cage towards the chapel doors. He hadn't talked since his interrogation but for a few mocking remarks to Aphedron. I quickened my steps and slipped into the shaded nave of the chapel. Located right over the reactor chamber, the heart of the ship, it was alive with buzzes and screeches of machinery. I stopped by a tank with blessed oil to the left from the altar decorated with emblems of both the Cog and the Aquila. The morning service had ended two hours ago, and the place was empty, the automaton choir on the upper gallery in sleeping mode till the evening.

I read a few litanies but my thoughts were still away from religious things. Arothron was little more reliable than the two Magi, prone to punish presumed heretics before thinking twice. I leaned on a column, picking the safest words to start with.

Shouts in binary came from the outside. Arothron's voice. I straightened up and adjusted the collar of my tunic.

'What disgusting warp-scum,' he bellowed entering the chapel. 'It is outrageous that a loyal servant to the Machine God decided to keep it on board instead of summoning us to banish it forever.'

'The gull-sorcerer ensured that half of the ship would go kaboom if we even try. Honestly, the daemon prince was quite an obnoxious fellow even before.'

'Why do you know him?'

'He tried to sacrifice me to the ship we vanquished along with the Macan Kumbang. A Diasporex comrade of the late Pirate King.'

He narrowed his eyes. 'Diasporex, a bunch of filthy strays. Even millennia after we smashed them they come back to pester us.'

I stepped towards the massive lectern with flickering lamps. 'Hope they don't record confessions here.'

'The Omnissiah still knows everything. Even things you are trying to hide from your mentor.'

I sighed. 'Even you think I'm the apprentice in the group now.'

'We are all apprentices on the Path to Knowledge.' He covered my head with the edge of his cloak and leaned his face towards me. 'You may begin.'

I took a deep breath. 'Father, doubts are tormenting me. Doubts and weakness. When I work with Lord Crinitus, I feel unfit for my job. Challenges I can cope with have been left behind, in the still peaceful sub-sectors around Uebotia.'

'There is no peace among the stars, Inquisitor. Pray to the Omnissiah to give you strength to overcome the doubts.'

'There's a wish I'm thinking over for months.' I looked into his face. 'To leave Lord Crinitus and work on my own, as an Inquisitor in my own power.'

To my surprise, he nodded. 'I do not see anything reprehensible here. Apprentices challenge their mentors, children challenge their parents to gain strength. Our sire welcomed us to challenge even him, an unrivalled demigod.'

'Thanks for supporting me, Father. But here we stumble upon the worst. Good jobs are few. Losers like me are many like crap.'

He pressed his finger to my lips. 'Do not you dare to curse before the face of the Omnissiah. You are young and able to learn. Not everything depends on physical strength. Flesh is still weak, be it a giant or a waif.'

I blinked. 'I could ask Magos Tetraodon to teach me a few new skills.'

'Good. You should combat your own weakness before you defy your elders. I will do you a favour upon my next visit as a sign of gratitude for your team. You'll get a new right hand.'

I rubbed my wrist instinctively. 'It still serves me well, Father.'

'No pain, no gain. No power comes without sacrifice. The first augmented body part is a right of passage for the nomads of my homeworld. To say farewell to a part of your old life.' As I lingered, he went on, 'Gather your courage and come with me to my lab in three days.'

He read a binary prayer and gave me a blessing of absolution. A bit cheered up by the talk despite the prospect of brutal surgery, I headed straight to Tetraodon's personal forge where he usually spent his afternoons instructing Marilyna and Pao.

Rows of packed shelves occupied a third of the room, the rest being cumbersome machine tools and cogitators. I found our host at a small corner table, spare parts scattered on the surface before him. Pao who was soldering a motherboard flinched and nearly dropped his blowtorch as I stopped between the shelves. Marilyna pressed both hands to her chest, her gaze locked on Tetraodon who put his tools on the table without hurry and raised his head.

'It's fine, this is Lady Inquisitor. Hope you're good at keeping secrets, ma'am.'

'New discoveries?' I said sitting down opposite them. 'You all look kinda shocked with the results.'

'Not technically new, but most of my peers would count this as an outrageous novelty.' He took a dataslate that lay next to him and handed it to me.

I activated it. An empty device with a Mechanicus screensaver. 'Magos, the anomaly has erased the data?'

'It didn't exist yet when we were exploring the city. I've assembled it myself with the help of my adepts.'

I grabbed the dataslate as it was about to slip out of my fingers. 'You're kidding me, Magos. Without an STC? Most would call it heresy… if it was possible at all.'

'It's easier than you think. The Quest for Knowledge gives us ideas of what things are made of. It's up to us to use the gained skills.' He took out another dataslate. A complicated assembly pattern had been opened on the screen. 'There's a list of necessary tools and parts we have in tons.'

'Aren't you afraid of getting caught?' I asked him, stunned. 'I'm an Inquisitor, Lord Crinitus is a Terran agent of a high rank.'

'Lord Crinitus is totally aware. He's a man of a time when it was normal to make things with your own hands. In coming times of need, this might be vital to survive, like in the youth of his mentors.'

I took a spare blowtorch from a box on the table. 'I swear to keep mumb, Magos, but with a single condition.'

Both adepts froze up. Tetraodon's eye lamps stared at me.

I smiled. 'Take me in your crafting circle.'


	39. Episode 5 Chapter 5

First days with tools and wires left scratches and burns on my hands but gave me hope for a less bleak future at last. Tetraodon gave me a case of spare parts to practice with simple microcontrollers in my room. While the marines were training and Fluffster was slowly overcoming the damage caused by the ghost's bad mood, I locked in with the circuits and a programming manual. This was a fine skill to let me apply for membership in Ordo Machinum. Technically, programming wasn't common among Inquisitors but ties with the Cult Mechanicus allowed chosen members of the Ordo to get proficiency certificates. Hand assembly was just as defiant as the hidden shard or a piece of Torquetum but I was sure most Imperials wouldn't see the difference between hand-crafted and STC-produced slates. And if compared to many Radicals who used daemonic weapons or xenotech, my guilty pleasure looked almost innocent. I knew homemade primitive stubbers were common in underhives as most of my mentor's ragged hitmen had been armed with these.

On the third day I woke up with a pit in my stomach. I barely forced myself to swallow a bowl of porridge and walked to the strategium, chills running down my spine. I hated to show weakness or doubt to Arothron but the oncoming surgery creeped me out. When the Iron Father showed up in the corridor, I hid my right hand in the pocket.

He looked into my eyes. 'I expected more resolve from a person serving in the elite of Mankind's armies.'

I cracked a smile. 'I'm totally fine, Father.'

'You will not overcome future hardships of the looming Black Crusade if you do not learn to overcome your own fear of minor things. You have been wounded, you have had your limbs broken in previous fights, why cower at a rite common among our younglings?'

While he was talking to Tetraodon in the strategium, I opened the music player on my dataslate and listened to four songs tapping the rhythm on the wall but then pulled the earphones out. I walked back and forth between the strategium door and the far end of the corridor, almost ready to skedaddle to my room. My companions could help me with good advice and cheer me up but I doubted they'd approve the whole plan.

Finally, Arothron came out and waved his hand. 'Follow me, Inquisitor. I have warned Magos Tetraodon you will return in the evening.'

In complete silence I left the central compartment and stepped into the portal between the ships maintained by our astropaths and the librarian of the Iron Hands. Guards in black saluted to the Iron Father and froze up again. I entered a large cargo elevator after Arothron and pressed myself to the battered but clean wall. When the door opened, workshop noises deafened me for a second.

The ship interiors reminded me of the Galeos Parthenos but so well-kept it looked brand new. Ascetic chambers of unpainted metal were furnished with machinery as arcane as Tetraodon's. Serfs in oil-stained robes and repair servitors with multiple mechanical limbs scurried around a Land Raider in the center of a vast hall. An aged serf unloaded crates of spare parts from his cargo shuttle and knelt before an altar of the Machine God to have a minute of respite.

On seeing Arothron the serfs working on our side of the Rhino got down to one knee.

'Never waste your time on useless politeness. Efficiency above everything as Lord Ferrus taught all of us! Back to work!' he ordered. 'I will inspect the results in four hours.'

'Your quarters,' I said.

'My forge. The best place to worship the Omnissiah with the labour of your hands. The augmetics laboratory is upstairs. Wait in the anteroom until I get everything ready.'

'Father.' I looked down at the floor and bit my lip. 'What exactly will you do today? Maybe we can just take tests and agree on the construction.'

He took me by the chin and stared at me. 'Shame on you, Inquisitor. Weak people in the upper echelons are the cause of recent defeats of the Imperium. Today I will amputate the arm above the elbow and implant the primary augmetics to connect the prosthetic arm in two days.'

The breakfast in my stomach rebelled. I clenched my jaws so as not to stain his flawless floor with half-digested porridge. Arothron frowned. I tried to smile as cheerfully as possible in my pathetic state.

He took me by the forearm and led me up a wide stairway. A polished door opened as he held his gauntlet over the sensor screen. A white lamp lit up over our heads, and I saw a small anteroom with a metallic bench before another closed door.

'Sit down here. I need to prepare the tools and the reagents. Everything will be made in the exact order with all due precautions.' He stepped towards the inner door but I grabbed him by the wrist.

'Father, let's discuss the matter for one last time. I'm afraid this might go against the customs of our Ordo. Non-licensed augmetics of such visibility.'

'Magos Tetraodon and your own Lord Crinitus will deal with the paper side of things afterwards.'

'If the Inquisition demands to take the augmetics for examination, I can be left one-handed for weeks.'

He shook his head. 'You are years away from real power, Inquisitor. It is premature to plan any escape until you have escaped from your weaker self.'

I felt my cheeks and eyes burn. 'But… I think… I will need a hand for practicing with the circuits,' I said quietly.

'There is an implant more suitable for your condition of mind,' he said. 'On Medusa, children get it first when they reach puberty. Children of ten to twelve, girl. Do not disappoint me any more telling me you are too weak to bear even that.'

I just nodded.

He went on, 'A small, relatively simple mind impulse unit in your spine. You might upgrade it in future if you wish.'

I scratched my head. 'Agreed.'

The inner door slammed shut behind his back. I sat on the ice-cold bench whispering litanies, my bowels shriveled. It should be quicker, with speedier recovery, I told myself. I need this to grow past my today's weakness and lack of purpose.

'Come in!' a mechanical voice clamoured from the wall speakers. The door opened slowly.

Arothron, clad in overalls and a surgical robe, was arranging a display of creepy tools on a tray next to an operation table fixed in a beachchair position. Popup notifications blinked on a monitor with a Chapter emblem connected to the table machines. The cold pierced me to the bones after a minute there.

'Looks like an apothecarion,' I said.

'Apothecaries deal with bodily injuries while my surgical skills are limited to body enhancements. Tie your hair on the back of your head and sit down. I need to take probes first. Luckily, you will not have to wait for a mind impulse unit. There is an universal one in my storage that fits a person of your size. Artificer custom ones are reserved for our brethren only, hail the Omnissiah.'

I closed my eyes and gripped the armrests as he was fixing medical sensors on my arms and head. A horseshoe headrest unfolded before my face, and Arothron secured my head with straps.

'Fine,' he said. 'Now ask the Machine God's blessing for successful augmentation of your frail frame.'

He started chanting in binary, accompanied by a choir of bleeps from the machinery. A needle stung my neck. I startled despite my efforts. He gave out a hoarse chuckle.

'Anesthesia?' I asked him.

'A blood probe, girl. Feeble offspring of civilized worlds tend to ask questions shameful for children of Medusa. You are still afraid.'

'Just asking, I've never gone through that kind of surgery before. Usually in hospitals, they inject anesthetics at this stage.'

'You will get some as you are not a marine to survive it without drugs. An amount that lets the Medusan young survive their first augmentation.'

'Are there many who still kick the bucket?'

'Some. Unfit for the severe life on Medusa.'

Another injection sting. I took a deep breath. Arothron checked the table frame for one last time. 'Here we begin, Inquisitor. Just hold on and do not frigging scream. Ask the Omnissiah to give you strength during and after surgery.'

Sharp pain shot through my neck, and my breath stopped. The chamber drowned in black. Darkness. Cold death.

Air rushed into my lungs. Arothron's voice bellowed from the above, 'Pull it together, girl! Pray to the Omnissiah!'

Biting my lips so as not to sob, I repeated the Litany of Fear and the Oath to Obedience again and again in my mind. Tears rolled down my face and dripped on my tunic. At last, an eternity later, the Iron Father slapped me on the shoulder and undid the straps.

'Fine. The whole operation lasted for 3 minutes and 32 seconds. Yet you have blacked out. What a shame. Anyway, ask Tetraodon and the ship medicae to check the device assimilation daily for a week until it completes its integration into your nervous system in a proper manner. It has been a lesson for you on your way to power like for my compatriots.'

I got up and staggered on my trembling feet. 'Thank you, Father.' As I tried to pull a smile, my bitten lip cracked. Fresh blood tasted like iron that fit the place best of all.

'The last rite remains,' said Arothron. 'You will have to walk back to your room on your own feet. Unlike on Medusa, there will be no beasts or rivals attacking you. Sometimes we even poison the most overconfident ones with powerful toxins so they do not think too much of themselves.'

My neck on fire, I hobbled back to Tetraodon's ship, following the course set on my dataslate. Every step echoed with pain, the few prayer words were all left in my worn brain. Litany of Fear, Oath to Obedience. Litany of Fear, Oath to Obedience. Death Incantation.

I stopped before Tetraodon's strategium, gripping cable bundles with numb hands. Everything whirled and blurred before my eyes.

'Greetings, my lady!' Chi-Zeta on guard saluted with his rifle. 'My auspex senses distress alike to an injury.'

'It doesn't matter, Alpha. I've made it.'

Everything went black.

I opened my eyes in a quiet shaded room. The warm air smelled of medicaments. I touched the back of my neck to check whether everything had happened for real. A small hard bump under the skin had been covered with a bandage patch. The seam was a bit sore to the touch but didn't bleed.

My dataslate lay fully charged on the nightstand beside my pillow, next to a thermos. I swiped across the screen to see new messages.

'Call up once you're awake', from the crew chat. A 'get well' card from Tetraodon. Almost a full day had passed. I sent a few standard cheerful words to the chat and sat up to try the contents of the thermos.

Just a minute later a medic entered the room.

'Do you feel nausea or vertigo, ma'am?' she asked. 'Please let me see the seam.'

'Hope everything is alright,' I said.

'It is, ma'am. Less than a week until we're there. Your marines asked about you yesterday. They've come to see you today but you needed sleep after risky surgery. If you wish, Magos Tetraodon will arrive for a talk while you'll be having your dinner.'

When I was finishing a bowl of soup from the dinner tray brought by a servitor, there was a knock on the door.

'Ma'am, have a nice meal,' I heard Tetraodon's voice. 'May I visit you in your placid hermitage?'

'Sure, Magos, glad to see you. It's like I've been out of my senses for days.'

He put a package on my nightstand and sat down to a chair at the opposite wall. 'Fruit and sweets from my pantries to make this unexpected retreat feel better.'

'If the Iron Father saw that, he'd chastise me for my weakness of flesh,' I hummed as I took a purple round fruit out of the package.

Tetraodon gave out a mechanical laugh. 'Oh, I should keep in mind you're enchanted by Medusan customs. It has been quite a discovery for your folks. And a big shame for us. We don't think highly of Medusan imitations, you know.'

'Is Lord Crinitus really cross with me?'

'I'd say puzzled, and it's quite hard to surprise him.'

'First, Arothron suggested he'd cut off my arm.'

Tetraodon laughed louder. 'I wish they found out how to make truly augmented brains instead. One cannot get closer to Omnissiah by simply chopping off the extremities and replacing them with crude mockeries of bionics.'

'Funny how you, a tech-priest, mock their principle sacred for most among the Mechanicus as well.'

'It gets more complicated if you spend some time studying biology, ma'am. Flesh seems weaker than metal, and it is in some aspects, but is superior in many others. It's adaptive, it recovers by itself, it can adjust its metabolism to various conditions. It evolves without intervention. And, most importantly, it came first! If flesh was that weak, would the Machine God create us with biological bodies?'

'Even the oldest tech-priests have organic brains, I heard,' I said.

'Exactly. Bodies are machines in the same exalted way, driven by brains as vessels are driven by their machine spirits. An ancient philosopher from before the Dark Age of Technology said a human being is a ghost in the machine. Our kin from Medusa, even after so many millenia, still are naught but techno-barbarians. And one of the most definite traits of techno-barbarians is their aversion to any kind of intellectual sophistication. They are unphilosophical at their basis. Quite a shame that their Primarch's work at educating them was cut short. He has lost his head and hence they've never got theirs.'

I sighed. 'So strength doesn't depend on mere metal limbs. Arothron will object though.'

'Every new experience is a lesson of some kind. Well, concerning lessons. Your marines will bring you the circuits from your room after their training session. Nice results for a beginner but you still need days and weeks of practice.'

After he had left, I quickly drank the remaining herb drink from the thermos and turned down the lights. I had slept enough but my body was too limp to get up. Anesthetics and anti-inflammatory drugs made me drowsy, and even letters in text files kept on blurring. I stuffed the dataslate under the pillow.

Another knock at the door. I rubbed my eyes. 'Come in.'

Imudon walked in and stopped beside my cot. 'Aphedron is very sorry, he's to arrive in a quarter of an hour. I've waited him for a whole hour in a workshop anteroom because Adept Marilyna has graciously agreed to give him a private lesson in engineering.'

A half-smile lit up his face, and I smiled back. 'You're welcome. Sit down.'

He pulled the chair closer to the cot. 'Show me the implant.'

I threw my hair away from my neck. His fingers ran across the bandage, pressed on the bump of the mind impulse unit. 'This is useful unlike the arm. Good we're not travelling with the Salamanders so you won't have to have burns healed.'

A buzz in my ears at the thumping of my heart, I only blinked. Shattered nerves, as always. I squinted back at Imudon's face but he smoothed my hair and looked down at his wrist screen. 'I'll check up the settings now. If it works properly, you'll train to handle weapons and machines remotely.'

'Let's do that when I'm on my feet in a couple days.' I sat up again to see his screen. 'I'll repay you with my latest circuit-assembling skills you'll also need in future.'

'I've assembled more circuits in my life than you've ever seen,' he grunted. 'Only folks like Aphedron are always eager to seek private lessons everywhere they go.'

My cheeks felt hot. 'Well, let me explain what I meant.'

He chuckled at my uneasy smile. 'You're searching for power in quite clumsy ways. You still mourn your solitude, ignoring us quite often but then trying to befriend us.'

My lips trembled. 'The operation still hurt less than that farewell.' The thought I had tried to chase away while we had been busy on Cyprinus.

Metal vanished from his voice. 'Losses hurt indeed. But when old friends have to leave, old enemies sometimes turn into new friends. With a Black Crusade ahead, we must stand together instead of rebelling against those who hold us dear.'

'I'm not a machine like the Iron Hands. But my skills need a realistic purpose.'

He took my outstretched hand. 'Your duty to the people of the Imperium. I might sound like one of ridiculous zealots but your Ordo is sworn to combat the enemies of Mankind to shield those who cannot defend themselves. We fight on the frontline. You don't need to grow kilometre-long arms of adamantium borrowed from an Imperator-class Titan. Inquisitors need brains and charisma so that fighters, sages, psykers did their best as their part of the big work.'

'And what about the scale of Fluffster's affairs?' I said.

'It lets you be as useful as never before. True, I keep dreaming about a quiet place of my own as the big dogs plan another big machination but I'm still here where my bolter is in need. So that all quiet places remained that quiet.'

I met his sombre gaze. 'There are no ex Chaplains. Didn't expect you cared at all, after the centuries of being a wanted failed agent.'

Before he could answer, the door swung open. Aphedron, dressed in festive-looking garbs, waved one hand and showed me the case he held in the other.

'Volentia, I'm starting to miss my years alongside the Tenth as everyone around is chattering about their customs.'

He combed his disheveled hair with his fingers and tucked his gaudy purple shirt under his belt. 'I've brought you your fancy stuff so you can imagine yourself a clan lady from Medusa tinkering with war machines in her high fortress.' He put the case on the floor and leaned against the wall.

'Good to have friends who don't forget about my pathetic existence,' I said looking at both.

'Fluffster will come tomorrow,' said Aphedron. 'We've left Imperial space, and he's deciphering augur data. Yesterday, the news startled him right when he ordered to scour the borders of the Necron kingdom. He hurried to the bridge to ask Arothron what the heck. Arothron went on with his Medusan bullshit about parent-child rivalry. Then I asked the Iron Daddy whether he'd already replaced his own tool with a corkscrew.' He snickered so loudly the medic looked in frowning. Aphedron bowed his head. 'Sorry, doc, but that's too damn hilarious. Arothron went all purple as a beetroot and shouted that ol' man Ferrus would come back and smash us Fulgrim's filthy whoremongers to the last one.'

'He wouldn't do without his head as easily as his sons,' Imudon said with a sigh.

'When I first met the Iron Hands,' I recalled the flight to Coreopsis that had been like centuries ago, 'Fluffster said a dude from the Third had spent some time headless.'

'Lord Commander Eidolon, adventurous, vain Lord Eidolon,' Aphedron chuckled. 'Bile stitched his head back to his body but poor Eidolon had a bad time putting up with a… less handsome exterior. It didn't prevent him from becoming a queen's favourite lover though.'

I pulled a half-assembled circuit out of the case and found a package of wires. Headache ceded a bit, and I spent a couple more hours talking to the two until the medic arrived for the evening examination.

On the next day I finally saw Fluffster. Thankfully, he didn't reprimand me, telling about the dangers of the star cluster instead. The ships had located the Last Light, the fire maintained by an ancient arcane technology shining even through the warp the Necrons had never used to travel.

A day later, I saw it myself. A ray from a bright pulsing dot in the upper part of the star map on the bridge that didn't let our small fleet stray from the destination. The astropaths had caught a fading trail of the gull ship that also led to the heart of the slumbering alien kingdom.

'Hope he was wise enough to loot the tomb-palaces discreetly,' said Tetraodon. 'We cannot defeat even a single fleet let alone an army with a C'Tan shard.'

'We'll threaten to exterminate their crown world,' Verrox bellowed on the loudspeaker. 'They'd better give the bastard out lest we take their ruler with us to the grave.'

'A menace of death to a race that's a paragon of flesh mortification,' Tetraodon chuckled. 'They're technically in their graves right now.'

'Or already not,' Fluffster said.

Tetraodon muttered a litany in binary and leaned over the panels. Adept Marilyna exchanged lasting looks with Aphedron and joined Pao on the control center platform to check all generators and cannons.

In a day Tetraodon told the navigator to prepare for a jump out of the warp where the trail was the freshest. The sorcerer had exited the Immaterium right over the alien capital, near the Last Light itself. Probably for stealing it, the most expensive loot after the fabled Blackstone Fortresses.

'He would have got a fortune if he had managed to purloin it,' I told Fluffster watching a holographic model of the beacon spin above the map.

'There are no lords that rich to pay for it. I doubt even Huron Blackheart can afford it. It's the brightest shard of the Burning One known to the Necrons, set in a frame so finely crafted their remaining smiths won't be able to create even a pale likeness of the Last Light.'

'The Burning One is a C'Tan that has something to do with the Webway,' I recalled the scant paragraphs from the textbook.

'The elemental of pure energy that powered Dolmen Gates. Flames of a single shard could show the way to fleets in both the void and the warp.'

A light jolt shook the platform under my feet. The screen that covered the oculus slid up to reveal reddish twin suns with stars scattered all around over the dark. The map flickered for a moment, then lit red.

'Danger. Danger. Level Extremis,' the plain voice of the Machine Spirit called out in sudden silence.

Dozens of alien ships invisible from the warp scurried over the crown world like a swarm of startled wasps. An enormous battleship docked in high orbit cast a crescent-shaped shadow on the surface flickering with countless emerald lights. The tomb that had been quiet for millennia beyond human existence had turned into an anthill burgeoning with life.

'Prepare for a warp jump, as soon as possible!' Tetraodon shouted to the navigator, then connected to the channel of the Iron Hands. 'No nonsense, Captain! Fall back!'

A discharge of dazzling green cracked in the centre of the bridge. Tall warriors of shining metal stepped out of a cloud of light, led by a fearsome overlord with a fiery sceptre. The overlord raised the sceptre above their high-crested head, the soldiers behind the overlord's back took aim at us.

Fluffster said a phrase in the alien tongue. The overlord answered in a melodic baritone, softer than the harsh voices of the crypteks I'd encountered. Then Fluffster took an interpreter device out of his pouch and connected it to the control panel. First there were just cracks and beeps in the speakers but as the overlord started speaking again, all present on board heard the words in High Gothic.

'By the will of our Phaeron, Tehuti of the Wedjat Dynasty, Guardian of the Last Light, Shield of the Old Empire, the Silent King's Master of Lore, Mighty Overlord of ten warrior-lords, I, the High General of His Majesty's Ibis Guard, order you, children of younger races, to lay down your arms and humbly present themselves before the eyes of His Majesty.'

'Noble General,' Fluffster's voice spoke throughout the ship, 'we are after a criminal who purloined our property and awakened your kingdom. I hope we will be able to negotiate the extradition.'

'The human warlock whom you chase has pleased His Majesty with a detailed account of past events,' the General answered more eagerly than one would expect from the Necrons. 'He arrived when we had already arisen from the Great Sleep, warned about coming perils by Lord Anrakyr the Traveller.'

'What will the Phaeron accept as a gift of our good will?'

'His Majesty demands your memories of what happened while we were resting in our sealed chambers.'

'He has found the right person.' Fluffster bowed his head and made us a sign to follow.

'Magos, what about the Iron Hands?' said Tetraodon.

The General spoke instead, 'The warship of your tool-warriors tried to assault us and appropriate our drones. His Majesty ordered to contain them in a dimensional trap until the matter is solved, as you seem to be the nominal leaders of the fleet.'

Tetraodon chuckled. 'Good that Verrox doesn't hear that. I should take any other chapter along, even the Black Templars would do well. They at least don't try to steal everything shiny.'

'Your ship will be kept in the same dimensional dock while the Phaeron will be questioning you. No more than ten of you are allowed into His Majesty's library.'

'Seven from this vessel, one from the warship. I will persuade the Iron Father to join us. But give us time to put on space suits.'

When I checked the last clasps of my suit, I ran back to the platform where the marines were waiting in their full armour. The cloud of light expanded to swallow us. There was a clap, and the bridge gave way to a small alien shuttle of silvery metal. Glowing lines of green and orange weaved into eerie ornaments on smooth walls, dynasty emblems radiating the brightest of all. At another clap Arothron appeared before us, a bit confused for the first time.

'Magos, I knew you're of the eccentric kind, but not to that extent,' he grunted to Fluffster. 'Our Chapter has old distrust of the Necrons.'

'It's useful to see the realisation of your high ideal, Father,' said Tetraodon. 'In general, as much ghosts in the machine as us. And you see they had enough tenacity so adored by you so as to not stop after replacing all their limbs.'

I walked up to Marilyna and Pao stuck to the window, their youthful enthusiasm stronger than the customary caution of most Imperials. The shuttle was moving down through the airless void, bathed in warm orange radiance. Right ahead a pillar of necrodermis was rising a kilometre high over the tallest palace spires, a blaze of living flame flowing and shifting inside an intricate tangle of thin wires weaved together in an ever-moving construct akin to an armillary sphere. Sparks were running over the pillar of the Last Light, smaller ships orbited the shining top as moths around a lamp.

The shuttle flew under a bridge that connected a docking platform and one of the spires and headed to a pyramid of transparent emerald underneath. The pyramid surface turned out to be a mosaic of uncounted facets. Some used to be windows, larger ones were entrances to galleries of different sizes. When the shuttle approached the wall, one panel slid aside. The shuttle slipped in and landed on a vast platform lit by hundreds of green lamps. At once the General's guards appeared from the back compartment of our shuttle and surrounded it, more Necron soldiers marched towards us from a high portal on the other side.

'Come out, humans,' the General ordered through Fluffster's device.

We lined up under the emerald vault and followed the General, flanked by a dozen alien soldiers on either side. The portal opened. Before us lay a hall that vast it had room for a whole city. Up to the sky-high ceiling, miles long to the other end lost to sight, there were shelves and cases with data crystals and alien things without a name in human tongues.


	40. Episode 5 Chapter 6

Another alien overlord walked out from the maze of shelves, leaning on a cryptek staff topped with a glowing dynasty rune. Data crystals hung from the cryptek's ornate belt, glimmered in their collar-necklace. The General bowed down, and the cryptek answered with a similar bow.

'You have arrived, my lord,' the cryptek spoke in a deep but unmistakably feminine voice.

The General outstretched his hand. Their fingers intertwined for a second. 'Delighted to see you again, my lady. I have brought the messengers of a younger race by His Majesty's order. Is he still reading?'

'He is studying the tomes brought by the human warlock,' said the cryptek. 'The messengers may enter.'

She turned back to the shelves, shoulder to shoulder with the General, their murmured talk too distant to be caught by the interpreter. I turned up the volume in my helmet but there was just a faint rustle. The soldiers remained by the entrance. Fluffster at the head of our line, we passed between the endless rows and columns until we saw a smaller pyramid surrounded with massive pillars of generators. Bundles of cables weaved around the lower level, packs of drones flew back and forth between the shelves and the pyramid.

'You are about to enter His Majesty's control centre of the Great Library,' the cryptek addressed us as she stopped on the high threshold of the main entrance. 'Do it with reverence for the most enlightened of Phaerons and his great ancestors who built this library and filled it with the most sublime knowledge.'

The inside of the lesser pyramid reminded me of Mechanicus data-shrines with whole clusters of servers and peculiar laboratory equipment. In the central chamber, surrounded by floating holographic projections, stood Phaeron Tehuti himself, his head topped with a splendid crown decorated with finely crafted images of stylized twin suns, a moon crescent and a shining flame tongue over them. He was shorter than the two overlords but moved with truly majestic grace, projections lighting up and fading out at every unhurried move of his hands.

'My king, you devote yourself to the sacred lore so deeply your loving servants are worried about Your Majesty's fine health,' said the General bowing to the Phaeron, and the fatherly notes, strangely familiar as if Uncle was speaking, startled me.

'My good General, I am thankful to you and the Lady of the Library for your daily care but I have to remind you I am past my biological body to be concerned about health issues,' said Tehuti. His voice and stature betrayed his adolescent age, not often seen in the Necrons.

'Pardon me, I tend to forget about the changes too often.' The General and the Lady of the Library touched their hands again, and the screech of their speakers sounded too similar to a sigh. The old lore from the textbooks about the Necrons having lost their emotions completely was definitely wrong.

'We greet you in your great realm, Enlightened Lord,' Fluffster said solemnly. 'We are no strangers at the royal court of the Silent King and have arrived to you hoping for benevolence in return.'

Tehuti's eyes lit up. 'Sages are valued in the kingdom, human. Every single fact from the past long millennia is extremely important for filling in blank spots left by the Great Sleep. The High General has reported you keep much lore of your race that appeared not long ago but has expanded through the galaxy to some degree.'

His tone polite but monotonous, the lengthy sentences with many smart words had a creepy air to them.

'I have taken data archives that might be of your interest, lord.' Fluffster handed him a sealed case. 'In return I would ask you to have an eye to eye conversation with your latest guest.'

Tehuti took the case and opened the cipher lock with a few swipes of his fingers. 'I am unwilling to disappoint you, sage, but the human warlock left my disposition five turns of the planet ago. He had described the event known among your kind as the Heresy and the story of his military unit called the Thousand Sons. I decided to set him free after he presented me with specimens of human souls in tainted aether shells.'

'They might pose danger to your constructs,' said Tetraodon who had come back to his senses after minutes of enraptured gaping at the Library.

'I am aware of the perils of the Immaterium that had done my dynasty and kingdom much harm during the Great War,' Tehuti answered. 'Therefore I had them contained in tesseract labyrinths. I have logs of the conversation to show you.'

A holographic image of a runic text changed to two humanoid figures. One of them was the crowned Phaeron, the second was also easy to recognize by the gull head of his helmet. The sorcerer threw up his hands, true distress in his voice. 'Your Grace, I'm a damn fool. A fool who has hanged out with bookworms for my whole life. Have pity for my boiling brains.'

'Your words are hard to believe,' said the hologram of Tehuti. 'Are there so many of your kind who willingly consort with entities made of emotional waste? It is beyond reason to change one's body for a fragment of the Three.'

'Four, Your Grace, four. Your old enemies conjured another Chaos god while you were enjoying your sweet dreams.'

'The eventual collapse of their empire was predictable. They lasted for that long because they relied on the technological advances of the most fruitful period of their civilization that let them overpower their closest rivals.'

The sorcerer pressed both gauntlets to his visor. 'Let's speak about something… more human. I don't want my head to pop like a soap bubble. I can tell you about old Earth, my home. My friends who are wandering the galaxy.'

Aphedron cleared his throat. 'How did old Bile call that in his smartass medical language? Forced cerebral copulation.'

Arothron gave him a slap on the back of his helmet. 'No one cares a damn about your opinion, profligate.'

'Brothers, it's unfit to brawl when away from the Imperial lands,' Imudon bellowed.

'Exactly, sir,' said Tetraodon. 'Our hopes lie with our great Magos Crinitus.'

Meanwhile Tehuti scrolled through endless symbol columns with such speed everything whirled before my eyes when I turned my head.

'His Majesty is so wise and learned even in his young years,' The General said with genuine pride that reminded me of Uncle again. Maybe the only one among his reserved kind to share his feelings even with alien strangers. 'He used the Great Sleep to download the most important lore from the Library to his memory modules.'

'Your Library is immense even not counting the capacity of your memory cards,' Tetraodon stared at the holographic plan of the complex spinning over one of the projectors. 'A whole planet core.'

'And two moons of supplement data bases,' the Lady of the Library said calmly. She was as taciturn as most of us would imagine a necron but without their poorly hidden aversion to everyone and everything. Deep thoughtfulness embodied. 'Here, on the last border outpost, generations gathered priceless lore.'

The General nodded. 'And invented the best defences.'

The flickering river of symbols stopped. Tehuti snapped his fingers with a dry click. A holographic model of a ruined place appeared before us, and I recognized the depths of the abandoned mine. Surreally thin mummies crawled up the passage as holograms of our marines rushed forward.

'That is where you discovered the relic stolen by the sorcerer, humans,' said Tehuti. 'I used to know what is that. I had seen these abominations before we fell asleep.'

'Walking death. Cold death, the Hrud call it,' Arothron almost hissed the words.

Tehuti's green unblinking eyes stared back at us. 'Death is lingering in these halls even though we did our best to insulate our people from this deadliest of menaces.'

The General clenched his staff. 'My king, I beg you not to mention it here. The world is alive.'

'But for Lord Anrakyr's vigilance, we would have fallen prey to new dangers, unable to use our defence constructs,' said the Phaeron.

'Lord Anrakyr is just begging under the guise of help, my king! I must repeat I heard his own domain of Pyrrhia had been plundered.'

'I understand you, my noble General. But death can return any day and destroy our bodies and our cities like it destroyed those human buildings. Good lady,' he looked at the Lady of the Library. 'Please establish the connection with the White Moon while I am searching in the data archives of the Black Moon.'

Both overlords stayed silent for a couple minutes, their eyes blinking, then came back to their senses at the same time.

'The White Moon has no records of similar events, my king,' said the cryptek.

'The Black Moon has a few sections that could give us a hint but the data is either damaged or overwritten,' said Tehuti. 'We have to pursue the sorcerer to examine the technology sample. If the phenomenon is that destructive in fact, I will call a joint expedition of a number of powerful dynasties to Cyprinus.'

'But the STC belongs to the Mechanicus of Mars, king,' Tetraodon hummed.

'Do you really think we will need your machine to power our cities where one ancient reactor has energy production like twenty of yours?' said the Lady of the Library. 'After His Majesty and his scholars have completed the investigation, you will be free to take it.'

'I'm sure you know where the thief is now,' said Fluffster.

'I had scarab beacons placed on his vessel. They will not last for long in warp-tainted environment but will show the course.' Tehuti turned to another projector and made a brisk swipe in the air. A spherical map of the Galaxy appeared before us. At the next swipe it zoomed in to show an area of space in the north-west. A line started from the Last Light's crownworld marked by the dynasty rune, running to a cluster of planet systems.

Tehuti pointed at the abrupt end of the line. 'That's where the signal stopped. He's heading to the former croneworlds in the whirlpool you call the Eye of Terror.' The ancient map, created millions of years before the Fall, showed Aeldari worlds in the place of the Eye.

'A road well-known in some circles. Not surprised,' said Fluffster.

He showed his dataslate to Tehuti, a newer map of the same region opened on the screen. A warp road without a standard code passed through a small corridor of stable space into the fringe area of the Eye. It ended by a strange space object that didn't have a daemon world mark.

'You know this place better.' Tehuti found the coordinates on his own map. Just empty void between systems.

'It's called Flotsam. A section of a ruined craftworld that was trapped in the Eye but didn't have the luck of Altansar. Daemons of the Dark Prince, the newborn fourth Chaos god, sacked it but then lost their interest to the emptied plaything. The biggest section was caught in a looped warp current by the border and became a transit base for traitors and renegades who fled to the Eye after the Heresy.'

'So we have to reach it before the man friggin' sells it away,' I said.

'Easy to say, harder to do,' said Aphedron. 'In my earlier years, I tried to cross the stormy tides with my company for many times. Sometimes it took years in the bloody warp to move a mile in realspace.'

'The soldier says right things, my king,' said the General looking at Tehuti. 'You know better than me that our ships cannot move that easily in distorted space.'

'Venerable Magi,' Arothron broke his silence, 'you should consider it twice. Wandering into the cursed land of the Eye, without proper sanctions, without a precise plan. It is home to the damned traitors, and we are but a small fleet.'

'Wow, wow, the staunch iron bullies are gonna shit their pants in fear,' Aphedron chuckled. 'All they can do is to beat the crap out of a starved wretch.'

Arothron gave out a raspy breath. 'We do not flee from combat. We consider the strategy.'

Aphedron shook his sparkly golden crest. 'Would Your Grace accept a little sign of our good will?' he said in his sweetest voice.

'What kind of prank he has in mind?' I heard Imudon's irritated voice by our inner vox channel. 'I've known this sinister tone since I first hired him.'

'It will be appreciated, human warrior,' Tehuti answered calmly.

'I bet the gull sorcerer offered you a worthless loiterer, while we have the finest daemon prince specimen on board. A human equivalent of your crypteks hailing from a great tribe of yore.'

'It is of value. My lady, I request a tesseract labyrinth from the exploration storage.'

'The guards will deliver it in no time, king,' said the Lady of the Library and made a few unhurried swipes across a holographic screen by her side.

Tehuti dismissed us with a regal gesture. 'You may leave for your ship and send me the exact coordinates where I should teleport to.'

'Of the vessel garbage block maybe,' I heard Aphedron's chuckle in the channel. 'What a nerdy boy crowned by a whim of Lady Luck.'

'You've already studied a few smart words as well,' I said with a smile.

'I'm a good pupil, says our splendid Miss Marilyna.' He ran his gauntleted hand down the tech-adept's waist but withdrew at Tetraodon's ironical cough.

Fluffster who had been talking to the Phaeron tapped on the wall. 'Everyone, get ready, so as not to throw up,' he announced.

A cloud of sparkling energy enveloped us as the Lady of the Library raised her staff. When it dissolved, leaving a faint vertigo, we all were standing before the ghost's cage. The Warpsmith's transparent face turned towards the xenos. Surprisingly undisturbed, he waved his hand.

'Funny guests on board,' I heard his psychic voice first in days.

'He will make a good advisor on the life of younger races.' Aphedron took off his helmet to show his content grin. 'My best friend valued his company above all.'

A small silvery cube appeared spinning on Tehuti's palm. 'Open the container, sage.'

Sigils on one side deactivated to make a way out, the ghost bounced back and forward, spectral wings unfurled behind his back. He dashed into the breach, a wave of psychic energy rolled through the chamber.

A sharp stab of pain set my midriff on fire. Everything darkened before my eyes, I stumbled against the wall. Strong arms caught me before I could slip down to the floor.

'Open your eyes!' a familiar voice bellowed from the dark.

It's just a dream, I thought on the verge of getting lost in the murk. Everything had been a dream. I will wake up in the owl soon.

Darkness gave way to the chamber walls. Imudon's arm wrapped around my shoulders, I made a clumsy step to Fluffster talking to Tehuti by the now empty cage.

'Sorcery. The same sorcery of the shrine,' I wheezed out.

'Because the Warpsmith bargained with the Dark Apostle before the duel on the Macan Kumbang,' said Imudon. 'You'd better have a rest now.'

Tehuti was spinning the arcane cube in his fingers, his tone disappointed. 'Something prevented it from entering the labyrinth. As if the spectre has dissolved. I need to get back to the Library to look for precedent cases from before the Great Sleep. My sensors cannot measure psychic fluctuations. But there were records…'

Fluffster whispered back so quietly I didn't hear a single word. A guess shone in my hazy mind. 'Your Grace!' I shouted, afraid of another bout that wouldn't let me finish the phrase. 'Do you know the gaoler?'

Both overlords looked at their king who seemed puzzled by the question.

'Illuminor Szeras mentioned this entity,' I breathed out though the darkness was already creeping back.

'I knew something about the gaoler,' finally said Tehuti after a few strained seconds of thinking. 'I used to know. I knew…'

His speech shut down abruptly. He froze up, his glowing eyes went out. The General and the Lady grabbed his arms from both sides as he staggered. Their speakers gave out a screech of anguish. In a second of deadly silence Tehuti's eyes lit up again. He pressed his hand to the dynasty rune on the midriff of his necrodermis trunk.

'I do not know,' he said. 'Something has happened. I do not have a valid explanation.'

The General shook his head. 'My king, I beg you to return to the Library now.'

'General, you must get the fleet ready while I am working with the archives. We will set off in a full turn of the planet.'

The necrons retreated with a dazzling energy discharge. When the clap echoed in the chamber, I rubbed my eyes and leaned against the cage with its blessed wards.

'Let's go to our rooms,' said Fluffster. 'Especially you, Volentia. You'll have time for full recovery during the flight.'

Tetraodon nodded. 'The navigator is already calculating the road to Flotsam.'

Limping back to the infirmary, already out of the space suit, I wrapped my scarf around my neck and shoulders to cope with chilly draught that pierced me to the bones despite the climate control system. The strange breeze seemed to follow me wherever I went.

'The metal oaf thought he was smart. Exactly like me,' all of a sudden a voice spoke over my ear.

I shuddered and bumped into a column.

'I should have guessed about your mark.' Now, I recognized the voice. The unlucky ghost.

'Get back to your cage, man.'

'You've got a new friend, dear,' his tone was as far from friendly as Verrox's. 'Because of the mark. At least you can be safe from possession while you have it.'

'You tried to use me as a host so I fainted.'

'Not exactly. I fainted as well at the attempt. Now I'm doomed to linger around you until I meet the one who had placed the mark.'

'I wish this… entity never came close,' I grunted.

'It doesn't matter what you want,' the Warpsmith snapped back.

He stayed silent for the rest of the way. I closed the infirmary door and flopped on my cot. There was no psychic presence right around. After a minute I got up to my feet with effort and walked up to the door. A feeble whiff of warp draught blew from the other side.

'You're waiting there, Warpsmith,' I sent to the ghost.

'Just the furthest I can get away from you.'

'Don't mess up with my business and I'll ignore you.'

An invisible hand tossed my package of circuit parts into the air. Wires and lamps scattered over the cot and the floor. A half-assembled circuit was dancing in mid-air before my eyes.

'I did the soldering part better even in my first days of apprenticeship, girl. Our old drunkard of a repairman would have given you a smack for such dirty work.'

'I'll call the Iron Hands Librarian to placate you. Time to get out.'

'If he tries to rip me off, it might kill you.'

'Why the heck did the mark work this way?'

He cackled, and the circuit flew into my face. 'Because I owe the tricky Word Bearer a debt just as you. Everyone is bought by his damn innocent face as he's buttering up to another blockhead. For his own profit, as usual. How did you get caught?'

I pressed my palm to the fresh scratch on my chin. 'I thought he would help me against Imudon.'

'I thought the same. That he would protect me from the Panther and his genestealers. I should have stayed with the loyal bulk of the Void Leopards.'

He retreated before I could ask him anything. With a sigh I got down to my knees to collect the wires.

First storms came down upon us in a day when we had sailed far enough from the Last Light to the vicinity of the Eye. Both the Magi and the Iron Hands busy with the navigation, days passed in sour silence. Warp-sickness hit me harder than before after the surgery and the magical attack, and I often stayed in bed for a whole day, only having a couple relatively lucid hours to read news or tinker with the circuits.

The Warpsmith showed up only when I was busy with the lessons, cackling at every mistake or awkward move. I tried to ignore that but it was useful to remember the mistakes to avoid them in future. When I took out the knitting bag, the yarn had been unraveled and tangled by the ghost.

I slapped on the table. 'If you're just loitering around, don't friggin' spoil the work of others you cannot do.'

'Once I was a good knitter, spackler, janitor, street vendor and many many more,' he answered. 'One had to master everything to earn a penny for another day with food in one's belly. What did you do when you were nine?'

'Lived in the orphanage.'

'My momma kicked me out every morning to earn a package of spook for her. One day I got sick of menial jobs and ran off aboard a merchant ship. The repairman gave his pupils daily thrashings when he got drunk but he knew how to deal with machines.'

'Aphedron said you had wanted to be an apothecary.'

'When the old man bashed my head in with a lever, I decided to stay in the ship infirmary. The surgeon's assistant had just died from an alien pox she had caught from our xenos allies.'

'How did you get into the legion then?' I said.

'The Panther's parents bought the ship I served on. His real parents. They'd just got an Imperial Trade Warrant. Then the Luna Wolves recruited the Panther and checked the ship for potential recruits. I turned out to go along well with Horus' geneseed. Guess how stupid was the Panther's mad idea about the mythical Queen as his mother.'

Three days later the fleet had reached the current that carried Flotsam, and I finally felt better though we we already within the Eye. The mark felt sore but my mind had cleared. During my first training in the ship gym with the marines I complained about the ghost.

Aphedron snickered. 'If you think you're unlucky think about the poor bastard doomed to an eternity of stalking you!'

Imudon frowned. 'I knew this kind of sorcery. With a mark, it's even possible to bind a daemon to a blank. He can become a living bomb if the Dark Apostle desires to blow us up.'

'Can I at least train him to become a warp familiar sorcerers use for spying?'

'With your shard, yes,' said Imudon. 'But better don't.'

'So like the gull man. He's happy to have left the ghost behind.'

'Dear, we'll beat him up on Flotsam anyway,' said Aphedron hacking at the training automaton with his sword. 'The astropaths told Fluffster they sensed the presence of the gull on the road.'

There was a tiny bubble of calm around Flotsam spinning in the warp waves. Fluffster said its denizens had managed to steal a Necron pylon from one of worlds around Cadian but it was only enough to let rogue ships dock to the remnants of the craftworld.

Once our fleet had entered the bubble, Tetraodon ordered to open the oculus. Inside a drop of black void with colourful warp clouds whirling around the border I saw a weird structure of off-white glowing wraithbone that could have looked like a space station but for its irregular shape. It was an uneven half of a broken egg partly covered with a transparent dome, human and alien ships were docked here and there to its dimpled sides.

'A fun place to drop in,' said Aphedron, his armour polished as if he was going to a parade. 'I'd prefer to rock something festive but I smell a good brawl ahead.'

While the navigator was driving the ship towards the craftworld husk, I hurried to my room to put on something decent. My second venture to a place of trade and entertainment after Oldshadow, I hoped to spend the time in a fancier way than just waiting until the end of negotiations. The man I was looking for loved hiding under the most discreet guises, and I planned to have a tour around the gambling dens and boozing kens. To be honest, the description of the place from Fluffster's archive reminded me of my first year of service when my mentor had been chasing his old nemesis through a picturesque underhive.

Dressed in my old gown I had worn to Hog'n'Shroom, the nearly expired glitter on my eyes and cheeks, I ran back to the bridge where Tetraodon was nodding to furious binary shouts from the speakers.

Imudon shook his head when I stopped between him and Aphedron. 'Have you at least taken your pistol with you?'

I touched the pistol hidden between the skirt layers. 'Aye, along with the shard.'

Aphedron chuckled. 'Aeldari guests will be jealous, dear. It did look way too classy for that shabby inn where you were trying to seduce your vampiric manchild.'

'Angel's grown up since then,' I said with a sigh.

'Good for him. The End Times aren't kind to children. Hope you've learned this lesson too, babe.'

'Just don't wander too far away from the group,' Imudon told me. 'There are Aeldari Corsairs as well as traitor slavers aplenty.'

'I thought you'll assist me in searching for the sorcerer.'

'I will, but after Fluffster is done with his own search.'

Tetraodon turned off the speakers with a shrill beep. 'Stubborn fools. I've barely managed to persuade Verrox to stay in orbit. I don't need a grandiose scandal down there when his tin soldiers get into it with xenos or the Emperor's Children.'

The docking had finally ended. Our astropaths suggested opening a direct portal into the Guest Hall but Fluffster insisted on going out in a shuttle.

Unlike on Oldshadow, we were no honoured guests for trade agents to meet. The shuttle slipped along a twisted wraithbone tunnel, packs of sleek Eldar jetbikes flickering past us.

'The knife-ears are nuts to hang out on the Dark Prince's playground in such numbers,' I said.

'They have a reactivated Webway portal here on Flotsam,' said Fluffster. 'Many are ready to risk to get a bunch of spirit stones or even a rare relic from local croneworlds.'

'It's a shame I avoided this place of fun during my previous career stage.' Aphedron gave out a laugh staring at the giant crowded hall ahead.

It was a single square the size of a city covered with the dome we had seen from above. Remains of Aeldari buildings formed arches and columns where groups of loiterers talked with slates or booze glasses in hands. Cells of ruined living houses had been turned into curtained cabinets for private negotiations, bars in former public buildings sparkled with hundreds of lanterns and warp wisps.

Fluffster slowed down under a decaying arch of silvery wraithbone. On seeing a shuttle of a Mechanicus pattern, a young lady in dramatic garbs and a space marine sergeant in the colours of the Iron Warriors walked away to the opposite side. I smiled recalling Plodia and her old trades with Limax.

Paying no attention to the two, Fluffster leaned over the control screen browsing the list of local canals.

'At least this works in a normal way,' said Tetraodon. Flanked by his apprentices and Chi-Zeta's squad, he walked to and fro across the compartment.

I raised my eyebrows. 'Didn't expect you haven't visited black markets before, Magos.'

He shrugged his augmented shoulders. 'My lady, I'm an Explorator, not a rogue trader. We tech-adepts aren't of the socialite kind. Let others hunt for drugs and exotic amusements.'

'Funny, the reactor STC is already among the latest listings of the big auction. But the seller isn't our Terran friend. A local team of the Dark Mechanicus responsible for buying and selling tech.'

Marilyna and Pao stared at Fluffster with their eyes open wide. Tetraodon just waved his hand. 'What's the start price?'

'It's listed in the auction advertisement program. All bidders will have to win it in fair combat. Everyone who attends the auction can buy tickets to see the tournament.'

'Let's inform the Iron Hands, just in case.'

'Why bothering the Iron Asses when you've got one of the best swords of the Great Crusade around?' Aphedron grinned showing his shining teeth like a poster hero of an action movie. 'I'll be done with them and will still have time to watch a dancing show in the bars.'

'How many bidders are registered?' said Tetraodon.

Fluffster tapped on the ad. 'Just one. The Painted Count.'

Aphedron whistled. The nickname didn't mean anything to me.

'What about the sorcerer then?' I dared to interfere.

'The STC first,' said Fluffster. 'Now, we'll wait until the tournament. Everyone, check your interpreter devices and don't take the beads out of your ears.'

He stopped the shuttle on the parking site on the bottom of a dried lake and chained it to a crystal coral bush with a ward-encrusted lock. Festive noise from thousands of chatting companions and clinking glasses, music from dozens of bars mixing into a deafening cacophony swallowed us. A troubled sea of all colours roiled around under the purplish skies beyond the transparent dome.

I smoothed my hair, tucked a lock behind my ear and winked at my reflection in a specular window of an inn. An investigation as close to a holiday as possible nowadays. Walking in the rear, I stared around at flocks of Aeldari corsairs in bright armour, drunken human traders dancing in the street and running round the corner to throw up. A company of mercenaries snickering high on some warp potion waved at me from a half-collapsed balcony of a hostel, and I waved back.

The shard jumped into my hand once I opened the pouch. A storm of psychic sounds and smells came down upon me. The hapless ghost's spectral form showed up in the crowd tagging along in sad silence. I reached out as far as I could, trying to catch any faint trail of the sorcerer.

Aphedron startled and turned back at the psychic outbreak. I nodded. Intoxicated thoughts blended in with daemonic whispers, so ten minutes later I had to drop the shard back so as not to get a migraine for the rest of the day. The auction plaza was near the very center of Flotsam so I decided to make inquiries there.

Fluffster led us to a gallery around the plaza and walked off to have a talk with the auctioneers in the big pavilion over the gallery. The wraithbone grotto seemed even quiet after the noisy street. When Tetraodon and Pao headed to a food stall by the exit, Marilyna perched on Aphedron's lap by the wall. I gave Imudon a nudge.

'What about a stroll around? We have two hours left until our listing.'

'I'd advise you not to stray from the plan.'

'Let's at least look at the plaza. They've already announced the first listing.'

We crossed the plaza struggling our way through the gathering crowd. A control automaton blocked our way to the scaffolding but Imudon opened the code of Fluffster's bid on his wrist screen and held it to the automaton's scanner.

'Surprised they don't use warp machines for that,' I said.

'Simple tech works better within the Eye if secured from daemonic antics. Also, their guests with pointed ears strongly object against excessive Chaotic engines. That's why even daemon princes of Slaanesh aren't very welcome here.'

The scaffolding was surrounded by about a hundred Eldars in Aspect armour and corsair garbs. A few seers were watching the announcement from a shaded pavilion between food stalls. I picked up two cardboard cups of free rainbow-coloured booze from a promotion table and handed one to Imudon. It burned my tongue and throat but a dizzy wave of joy came over me once I swallowed the booze. My lips formed a happy smile by themselves.

'Don't you…' Imudon started but noticed the already empty cup. 'It smells of warp drugs.' He poured the booze out into a garbage pit, took my cup and dumped both cups there.

Rocking slightly on my legs turned strangely light, I leaned on the railing and adjusted the volume of my vox staring at an auctioneer corsair who stood over the crowd with a wraithbone sword in his hands. The faint call of the sword reached my mind through the booze haze and gave me chills. It whispered of distant past, of death and rebirth.

'Long before the Great War,' I heard the corsair's voice interpreted by my device, 'Morai-Heg, the Crone, the Lady of Fates, had five great swords carved from her fingers. The one who wields them has power over life and death, the power of walking between the realms without falling prey to the Great Enemy. This Cronesword, the Sword of Daybreak, will show the true path to the champion who claims it.'

'Fluffster calls me,' Imudon said. 'Stay here, I'll be back soon.'

'This will be not a contest of swordplay but a competition of sacred verses. The greatest master of word will be rewarded with the Cronesword.'

I grabbed another cup of booze from the closest stall and ate a piece of strange-smelling purple marshmallow. Sparks were already flickering before my eyes, colours got brighter but started blurring.

A bareheaded space marine in the Night Lords heraldry threw his cup on the ground and shoved his way to the scaffolding in zigzags on shaky legs. He climbed up and nearly knocked the corsair off the edge as he staggered.

'Hey you, knife-ears!' He clapped his gauntlets, a happy grin of pointed teeth on his pale long face, his unkempt dark hair fluttering in the wind. 'Who's brave enough to challenge me, Leptonyx of Nostramo?' He breathed in and shouted, 'I challenge you faggots for a battle of rhyme, every pansy of yours not worth a dime, you skunked your Empire in times of Fall so let the Whore-Goddess shag you all!'

The Aeldari ignored the clumsy rhyme but the Night Lord smiled even wider and showed them his middle fingers. Cheered up by the warp-infused booze, I grinned and raised my hand. Why not compete for a relic really handy in our travels unlike my chainsword?

I slipped between the railing bars and ran up the stairs to the top of the scaffolding. My rhyme was just as bad as his but fine for a round of flyting.

'You traitor junkie, stupid and lame, I'll challenge you in the Emperor's name! Bugger off to your den of perdition from the holy wrath of His Inquisition!'

First laughs came from the crowd. Leptonyx pulled a face to me and beckoned. 'Corpse-worshipping wench, I'm a famous warlord, come have a look at my own greatsword!'

'Enough!' Five Drukhari Incubi appeared on the scaffolding. They grabbed Leptonyx by his arms before he could finish his round. 'Get away, you filthy mon-keigh, don't insult the Crone with your dumb blabbering.'

Despite Leptonyx's curses they threw him off the scaffolding. I hurried down on my own under their grim gazes. Two Corsair Princes and three decorated craftworld Aeldari were already going upstairs from the other side.

I found a place by the railing and bought a nut pastry from a stall that accepted Imperial currency. The Aeldari started chanting their poems, all lengthy and filled with whole oceans of water. Their imagery weird, their expressions hard for the device to interpret, I soon lost interest in the competition and took the bead out.

Five rivals exchanged monotonous chants until a sixth participant appeared from the seer pavilion. Unusually tall for an Eldar, the newcomer was clad in dazzling white armour of the Swooping Hawks, snow-white and gold feather plates of their signature wings unfurled above the warrior's shoulders.

'Try again,' the Dark Apostle suddenly crooned within my head. 'Try again. Let me speak through your mouth, and I will recite a poem they cannot surpass.'

Though drunk, I got the catch at once. 'Just bugger off.' I folded my hands in the sign of the Aquila. The ghost gave out a screech.

The Swooping Hawk took their place on the scaffolding and turned towards the gaping loiterers. Instead of a soulstone a rune was shining on the breastplate under a hundred lamps. The rune of Ynnead I had seen on Ulthwe.

First verses sounded over the hushed plaza, spoken in a sonorous male voice. Two craftworld competitors stepped back at once. Only the third, an Autarch in the iconic red of Saim-Hann I recognized even despite my lack of knowledge on the Aeldari, answered almost at once after the end of the rhyme.

After a few rounds only the Autarch remained standing, both his and the Swooping Hawk's intonations tense and dramatic. The Swooping Hawk clamoured another verse, and the gathered Aeldari gasped like one. The Autarch turned his back to his rival abruptly and ran downstairs. Her face pale, the auctioneer handed the Cronesword to the winner. The Aeldari froze up in silence. Only one of the seers in the pavilion nodded.

A group of Aspect Warriors nearby exchanged a few whispered phrases. Curious, I stuffed the bead back.

'How did he dare? To say this out loud?' a Howling Banshee said in indignation.

'Is he one of our kind at all? Or a Neverborn in disguise?' a Striking Scorpion echoed.

The corsair auctioneer was replaced by a twisted Heretek in a black robe who announced the next lot. Aeldari bands roamed away from the scaffolding, and I followed to find my buddies. As I passed by a curtained section of the gallery, a voice called out.

'Lady Inquisitor, glad to meet you again! Greetings from the Megachiroptera!'

A group of marines sat around a set table. Through the half-open curtains I saw a youth in Scout armour of the Eighth waving both hands to me. Next to him, the Flying Fox himself was sipping on his glass


	41. Episode 5 Chapter 7

I walked closer on my tiptoes and peeked behind the curtain. The youth grabbed an empty glass from the table, poured in some blue wine from a bottle in the center and handed the glass to me.

'That's me, Aethalops from Eupulmonata!' In his new legion colouring, with his hair grown down to the shoulder on one side and shaven in spiral lines on the other side, I barely recognised the Governor's son.

I took the glass and shook his hand. 'Glad to see you too. Another of my old acquaintances got enlisted into the ranks of the Bat Lord's offspring.'

'My lady, if we were regular army men, I'd have reprimanded you for greeting an equerry before his commander,' I heard the Fox's sour voice.

I smiled. 'Our last meeting was too creepy to be called friendly but you're definitely nicer to meet than many, sir.'

Aethalops pulled a chair out from under the table and sat me down. The Fox frowned but didn't object. They weren't the only Night Lords in the room: a lanky legionnaire with a lieutenant badge on his pauldron was sitting in a shaded corner with a naked wych in his lap, three others, a sergeant and two raptors, were picking snacks from a stall at the back wall.

'How're your siblings doing, Master Aethalops?' I drank a few sips and leaned back with the glass in my hand.

He grinned proudly 'Training to become pilots.'

'We'll try to make a real fighter out of your brother if another of us bites the dust this year,' The Fox grunted. After a pause, he looked at me. 'Inquisitor, I wonder how your innocent crew takes this place.'

I gulped the rest and breathed out. 'A lot has changed, sir. To put it short, I had to say goodbye to all of them but one.'

'It's perfect time then. I hope you've left the hamster with you. He's the only one to make use.'

'Actually, it was the hamster who has left me in his team,' I chuckled.

'Even better. He knows the ropes, as one of my employers liked to say about men of skill. And you don't risk losing your job.'

'That's a great nuisance for us,' Aethalops interfered. 'Recently, we're on the rocks, down to nineteen…'

The Fox slapped Aethalops on the back of his head without flinching in a muscle. 'I warned you not to blabber about the warband affairs with the Imperials. It's even worse than your old Khornate tendencies.'

Drunken laughter rolled under the vault as more Night Lords burst in. At the head of the motley band I saw Leptonyx in a cloud of booze fumes, reeling right and left, grabbing walls and columns to stay on his feet.

The last to enter was a giant of aether unflesh who towered a meter over his retinue. The ghost by my side gave out a hiss on seeing the daemon prince. Vaguely human in shape, the ascended Night Lord had bony bat wings growing out of his skull instead of horns, giving his head the look of bat helmets of the Eighth. Dramatic strokes of black ran down his cheeks and up his forehead around his rounded eyes. His wings folded behind his armoured back also reminded of giant jungle megabats.

'I say, my chances to win the STC are shrinking.' The daemon prince spoke in a guttural baritone, heard both outside through the interpreter and inside my head. 'Pansexualis has just popped up like a jack-in-the-box.'

'He has lost his mutations, I heard.' said the Fox.

'It has made him stronger against… my kind.'

The Painted Count, I recalled the name on the list. That's whom Aphedron would have to battle for the STC.

He cast a glance of contempt at me. 'Who's this dolled-up lass? Your equerry's new fancy, Duke?'

'We used to work together in that ruby business,' said the Fox.

Unblinking eyes studied my face. 'An Imperial servant. With the Weasel tagging along as a familiar.'

'Are you here to tell the story about how all daemons of the warp examined your every spectral aperture since the Siege, Skraivok?' the Warpsmith snapped up.

'Hire a sorcerer to have his mouth sealed, girl,' said the Painted Count.

'About sorcerers and prizes,' I said in a tone best suitable for risky diplomacy. 'It was another acquaintance who stole this very STC you covet from my friends. I hoped to catch up with him here.'

The Painted Count shook his head. 'Finders keepers, losers weepers. Up to your friends to win the STC back.'

'The sorcerer left on the day he had sold the reactor. Without bargaining,' said the Fox.

Leptonyx flopped down on a chair next to me, his mouth full of snacks. He reached for the bottle but dropped it. Wine trickled across the table. He cussed and waved his hand to his retainers still grazing on the food stall.

A raptor brought another bottle and filled every glass on the table. The Fox grabbed his and raised it with a solemn gesture.

He clamoured a toast in the language of his homeworld with unexpected power in his voice, and the device translated it. 'For us, for the orphans!' His eyes watered and shone in the scant light.

'For us!' all other Night Lords cried out.

'For the orphans,' I said in High Gothic and emptied the glass.

Leptonyx leaned over to me. A gust of alcohol smell blew into my face. He looked youthful compared with other warlords in the room, and his boozed vivacity contrasted with their brooding outlooks.

'A saucy lass you are, Inquisitor. But for the spiky xenos bastards, I'd have got the bonesword but would offer you a boner sword as a compensation.' His High Gothic had a strong Nostraman accent.

I hummed at the pun. 'I'm too bonetired for such talks.' Despite my efforts to speak in a relaxed tone, I felt blood rush to my cheeks.

'Calm down, brother,' the lieutenant in the corner said languidly running his hands up the squirming wych's sides and thighs. 'Iselder Meddwyn says no one stood a chance against the White Hawk, the Autarch who won it. What he chanted is taboo for most but the craziest of their kind.'

The wych put her hand over his mouth and murmured a phrase in her tongue my device couldn't catch.

Leptonyx put his hand on the back of my chair and squinted at the Fox and the Painted Count talking. 'Varney loves alien sluts, the Duke and the Count love their own whining. I'm no nobleman like them but I'm ready to offer a deal of love to any lonesome gal.'

'A heretic's love is also heresy!' I said in Fungata's tone.

He grinned. 'Servants of the Carrion Lord want to make you all walking corpses. Good girls should stay away from all sweet kinds of heresy, they told you in the Schola. Then good girls and boys turn into old toads no one wants anymore.'

His oily tone reminded me of a flashy underhive 'golden boy' who had taken note of me in the slum bars when I was sixteen. A smell of drugs, tattoos all over his hands and neck. I blinked, my face burning.

Leptonyx leaned his face close to me. In the shadows he reminded me of Raaf with the same pale face and dark bird-like eyes. When he opened his mouth, between his pointed teeth I saw a purple pill on the tip of his pierced tongue. 'What about a dose of courage?' he whispered. 'Life is too short to lose your precious time.'

I dodged his drunken kiss and turned towards the entrance at the cackling of the ghost. Imudon was there, his gaze locked on the unruffled Night Lords.

'Lo, who do I see?' said the Painted Count. 'Imudon the Stepson has honoured us with his visit.'

'Imudon the Banished,' said the Fox. 'Your sudden flip has left me unemployed, priest, and you haven't even paid the last share.'

Leptonyx withdrew when Imudon pushed his chair away from me and put his gauntlet on my back. 'Let's go, girl.'

'Your lass doesn't quite like you if she ran off to our company,' Leptonyx said with a crooked grin.

The Fox screwed his eyes. 'She actually felt the opposite of love when I last met her. But glad for you, Imudon, that you finally managed to get hold of your object.'

'I paid the price in blood,' Imudon answered vaguely, and I didn't get what he meant.

I gripped his vambrace with both hands. Lightnings were sparkling over the strained Count's head and wings. The Fox stared at Imudon tapping the lightning claws of his gauntleted left hand on the table. Varney's face showed up from behind the wych's violet topknot. Only Aethalops poured himself another glass, not bothered by the brewing brawl.

'Pansexualis is in the same band as you,' The Painted Count growled. 'He shouldn't touch what I've already claimed.'

'You've returned your domain to build a city with the reactor?' Imudon parried.

The daemon prince's eyes lit red. 'Screw you. I'll buy a new weapon for the coming war for the cost of the STC. If it belongs to your buddy, let them pay a decent price to get it back.'

'A decent price,' the Fox repeated. 'You have no worth even as a hostage now, priest. Will your successor pay me if I hand you over to him?'

'I can offer you a better job. Not as lucrative as what forces of Chaos offer but you'll be safe from the maw of the false gods,' said Imudon.

'Gods I don't give a damn about.'

'They do give a damn about you and your men.'

'Duke, you aren't going to turn down the proposition,' said the Painted Count. 'The legion's honour is at stake.'

The Fox sighed. 'I don't like the Prince of Crows either. But he's not going to be on my ass like the Imperium. The holy parakeet's fine because he's just learned another set of sermons. Preaching against the Enthroned Corpse yesterday, against heresy today, about the Greater Good tomorrow.'

'Take care or you'll regret it soon,' Imudon said wistfully. He clasped me to his side and walked away. I only shouted goodbye to Aethalops.

When the boozing ken had been left behind, Imudon released me. 'How have you got there?'

'I was heading back but the crowd drove me away.'

'Look out for dangerous folks. The Night Lord who hit on you is a shameless junkie. The pill in his mouth is a Slaaneshi drug that can eat an unaugmented brain away but he just doesn't care. Our kind cannot get drunk from wine or amasec so many prefer the wildest junk mixtures.'

I frowned. 'He reminded me of a lad from my first year in the Inquisition. That lad sat next to me in a bar where my mentor had an appointment with a spy. Uncle chased him away once he saw us talking. He showed me purple lines on the lad's neck I had mistaken for tattoos. Symptoms of a warp virus dispersed by our nemesis' cult that later halved the underhive population.'

'Love hurts,' said Imudon. 'Try not to behave like an orphanage girl at her first party.' He pointed at a mirror display window we passed by, and I saw my face still red.

'The thing is, I am an orphanage girl. That's one of minor darker sides of our profession. Many Inquisitors have to stay away from friendship or courtship for their entire lives. Especially those who work far from civilized worlds.'

'Living a monastic life makes you vulnerable in some sense,' said Imudon. 'It might sound confusing but if you avoid lay sides of life you won't learn how to deal with them.'

When we came back to the scaffolding, Aphedron was there limbering up with his sword as the Magi were watching from the pavilion where the seers had been. I waved back to Aphedron who saluted us but Imudon led me to the pavilion entrance.

'Fluffster has booked the pavilion so as we don't get crushed by loiterers who'll soon come to gape at the brawl,' said Imudon as we were going up the stairway to our seats in the upper gallery.

Tetraodon nodded on seeing us. 'We've missed you, m'lady.'

'And you've missed the opportunity to see the Great Farseer of Ulthwe once again,' said Fluffster.

Memories of the talk in the Hall of Seers popped up through the intoxication. Something I failed to recall staring at the contest. 'He's arrived here to have the Cronesword claimed. Because all five shall come together in the last battle, he said something like that.'

'They will, as the White Hawk has won the Sword of Daybreak.'

'A strange xeno, this Hawk. The Aeldari present thought he might be a daemon in disguise. The Night Lord lieutenant's wych paramour said the Hawk's verses were taboo for their race.'

Fluffster's enigmatic tone was already familiar to me. 'You'll meet the Hawk again quite soon, I guess.'

'I found out something about the gull man as well,' I recalled what the Night Lords had said. 'He's already gone.'

'The STC comes first,' said Tetraodon. 'I'll order the astropaths to continue the search.'

The Painted Count's winged silhouette showed up by the railing, surrounded by a band of his legionnaire supporters. Once he stepped into the guarded circle prepared for the duel, his already hulking shape started growing. Bat wings flapped in the air, lightnings ran cracking all over his spectral body. His face features dissolved leaving only fiery eyes and a smoking maw with dagger teeth, vicious claws appeared from the daemon prince's clenched fists.

Loiterers cheered with ear-splitting yells. Then Aphedron strode forward, force sword in hand, a dozen kineblades dancing around him. He made a swift blade stroke in the air, and the edges of the sword lit up with psychic radiance. When Aphedron stepped in the crossing of floodlight beams, the audience shouted for him.

'Come on! Beat the crap outta the bat!' I clapped my hands.

'Do you love sport, m'lady?' Tetraodon said with a chuckle. 'This is gonna be an enthralling sight. If our champion survives the fight.'

I recalled the strict rules of the judiciary duel on Oldshadow. 'Will they duel to death?'

'It's not mandatory but if one of the rivals is killed, the auctioneers won't mind as long as the aftermath clash of supporter bands doesn't harm their property,' said Fluffster.

'We shall do something. We cannot let him just die.' I clenched my jaws at a sudden bad feeling. The same as Angel or Sister meddling in risky stuff.

Imudon patted me on the shoulder. 'All we can do is to believe in His providence.'

'No, no, no,' Marilyna looked at Tetraodon with tears in her eyes.

'I suggested sending Chi-Zeta to the arena with warp-disrupting blackstone on his armour,' said Tetraodon. 'He's less vulnerable to warp entities.'

Fluffster shook his head. 'Wait until you see the Emperor's power at work.'

The duel began. The first swipe of a giant wing nearly knocked Aphedron off his feet. Aphedron parried. His sword clashed with the daemon prince's claws in a burst of sparks. With my psyker-sight I saw their Wills struggle in the warp around.

Tendrils of the Painted Count's tainted aura tried to entangle Aphedron but slipped off his soul shining as never before. All the enemy could do with his psychic power was to keep the kineblades away from his face.

Aphedron struck in a leap aiming at the daemon's flaming heart. The blessed blade cut through the wing the daemon shielded himself with. Smoke billowed from the first wound. Though the Count's battle form doubled Aphedron in height, their speed was almost equal.

'Hope they'll croak each other. I've never liked any of those cocky bastards,' the ghost growled.

Furious at the pain and the insult, the Count darted forward. He kicked and hacked at Aphedron but the Emperor's Child slipped on and on around the Count's legs, almost every blow of the hail met by his sword. There were marks of hits on Aphedron's armour but none of the strikes had wounded him yet.

'You will get tired while I will not, petty mortal!' the Count bellowed.

A cloud of lightning started forming over the bone wings on the Count's head. Aphedron sent all his kineblades to the whirlpool of energy to thwart the attack but they hit against an invisible wall. Parrying another ferocious swipe of claws, he fell on one knee. A burning clawtip split his pauldron. Blood streamed down the purple ceramite.

Thrilled by the smell of blood, the Count gave out a howl. The lightning cloud exploded in a fountain of psychic fire. Roaring flames swallowed both fighters to the gasp of a thousand gapers. Both auras radiating with pain and fury, Aphedron and the Count attacked with their minds simultaneously.

Fire raged for half a minute, nothing to be seen but flickers of the blade and the claws. Then it gave way to aether smoke. The audience buzzed with discontent. But before they could get bored, the smoke dissolved to reveal the daemon prince standing with both hands raised over his head. Ichor was running from deep wounds where blessed kineblades had cut through his unflesh. One of his flaming eyes died out, cleft with a kineblade.

Aphedron's soul-light was fading away. When the smoke melted, I saw him hang limply from the Count's claws stuck into his armour. The helmet had fallen off, and his hair was red with blood. One claw skewered his shoulder under the broken pauldron, the other end sticking out of the grievous wound. Yet it was a stalemate: though the Count held the other clawed hand over Aphedron's neck to behead him in a single stroke, Aphedron's sword was aimed at the daemon prince's fiery heart glowing in his ravaged chest.

Marilyna gave out a shriek and pressed her hands to her face. Tetraodon shook his head, anguished either by the lurid finale of the duel or the emotional outbreak.

'Here you die, Pansexualis,' the Count hissed, smoke gushing out of his maw.

'I advise against it, Skraivok,' I heard Aphedron's psychic voice, amplified by the warp potion I had drunk. 'I'll still have time to run this blessed sharp stick through your heart.'

The daemon prince paused. Strained silence fell over the audience.

The Warpsmith burst out laughing. 'He cannot forget the wonderful party in the warp where he was the main course. Surely the Neverborn want more. I feel their hunger as they're drawn by the smell of his wounds.'

'Do you hear me?' Aphedron cried. 'You won't get the STC anyway! Your pals will sell it away and purloin the money while you'll be searching for a way back from the warp. You were a smart fellow once. Damn give it up and stay in the realspace.'

Smoking ichor had formed a pool around the Count's legs. He tried to move his wings but his mauled unflesh was slowly dissolving. With a yowl of vexation he tossed Aphedron to the ground and walked out of the circle.

The auctioneer lingered. Probably the Hereteks hoped to sell the STC if the remaining contestant died. But Aphedron crawled to the railing and got up holding to the bars. His armour ripped, his cheek flayed by the daemon prince's claw, he reached for his sword with his left unbroken hand and raised it over his head.

Applause and cheering cries thundered over the plaza. The auctioneer waved to the audience from the scaffolding.

A mechanical voice spoke from the wall speakers over our heads. 'The winner is Aphedron the Magnificent, the swordmaster champion of the Emperor's Children! We expect his supporting team to send the coordinates to have the prize transported to their hold.'

'Chi-Zeta, come down to pick up Aphedron. Three stim-packs will let him hold out till the return,' said Tetraodon.

I and Imudon followed the squad and sobbing Marilyna down to the scaffolding. Two rangers got hold of Aphedron already about to pass out and carried him towards the parking. Imudon took the sword from Aphedron's blood-smeared fingers. I picked up the scattered kineblades and handed them to one of the rangers.

On the edge of the plaza we stumbled upon the Fox choosing a new cloak by a stall with luxury clothes. He just nodded dryly while Aethalops smiled from behind his commander's back.

'My admiration,' the Fox grumbled. 'Well, I'm aware of your champion's talent for duels. But the Mechanicus has STCs in millions while we don't have a penny for the gathering legion's piggy bank.'

I pulled a crooked smile. 'The Imperium cannot allow another whole traitor legion, Duke.'

'One more, one less, your Imperium is unable to withstand them still.'

I smiled wider. 'Cadia stands.'

'Said an old man after a package of potency pills.'

Imudon pulled me away by the hand without a word to the Fox. Only in the shuttle he finally said, 'It would be a shame if their scattered warbands fall prey to Chaos.'

'So will the whole legion,' I said.

'You don't know the man who stands behind the unification. The Prince of Crows became famous for a single notorious phrase but soon got deeply disappointed with the betrayal.'

By the time of our arrival on board, the STC had already been transported to a cargo module of the lower decks. Fluffster had insisted on choosing a module easy to dump, remembering the curse of Cyprinus.

'The Iron Hands are waiting for us at the elevators,' said Tetraodon when we left Aphedron into the care of the medicae and headed to the ship armoury.

Fluffster showed him a report file in binary. 'Phaeron Tehuti's forces are here as well. We'll begin in an hour.'

I quickly changed back into my work garbs and my carapace. The eyeshadows on one eye had smudged so half of my face looked like the Count's warpaint. My intoxication was wearing out giving way to headache. Tetraodon armed me with the same melta gun I had carried to the ruined shaft.

An elevator took us to the bottom of the ship. The module had been cleared of all other cargo crates, the machinery prepared to seal it away in no time in case of dangerous outbreaks.

'No, girl, no, don't go there,' the ghost suddenly wailed when I stepped on the escalator to the module. 'It's cold, so cold, don't you feel it? Please. Please.'

Waves of chill blew out from the chamber like on Cyprinus. Was it the supernatural cold or the proximity of outer space, I didn't know. My legs and arms were heavy, blood was pounding in my ears. I gripped the gun so as it didn't slip out of my fingers getting oddly stiff. Something more than just the afterparty effect.

Two forces had lined up along opposite walls of the spacious chamber, holding each other at gunpoint. One was led by Verrox, surrounded by elite veterans of his company armed with heavy bolters. He himself and Arothron had taken relic volkite guns like Fluffster, gifts from the Mechanicus their Chapter alone can boast. The Necrons gathered around Phaeron Tehuti standing proudly with a hyperphase halberd in his hand. The blade, a tongue of living fire like that of the beacon, shone warm orange above his crowned head. To his right I saw the General, to his left the Lady of the Library held a tesseract labyrinth on her outstretched palm.

In the center of the room a small cube was spinning in a stasis field a meter above the floor. Its silvery sides glowed with an eerie pale light of the depths of the ruined city of Cyprinus.

'It shouldn't glow like that,' Tetraodon whispered. 'Chi-Zeta, get ready.'

The two armies joined forces on both sides of the entrance. Under the barrels of a hundred guns the stasis field generator was turned off. The glow got intense. With a bleep white lamps lit up on the cube as Tetraodon connected to the STC with the control terminal and activated it.

First nothing happened. Then a thin film of sparkling frost started growing over the floor and the walls. The eerie cold became burning. I breathed in the frosty air and doubled over in a bout of coughing. Imudon stood still like a statue, aiming at the cube.

'Cold. So cold. Away. Away' The ghost sobbed as he whined the last word.

Cracks ran over the surface of the cube. A puff of grey fog rose over the cube, growing with every second. Tehuti's blade of flame wavered.

A gust of freezing squall slammed me into the wall. The fog formed a towering shape, vaguely human, with pools of the blackest black in the place of its eyes. It pointed up at the vault, and a molten hole opened up above our heads.

Bolter rounds exploded around the grey shape, rays of Necron rifles tore holes in the fog but it was still growing. I pressed on the throttle of the gun. It gave out a hiss but nothing happened. Both the marines and the xenos staggered before another salvo. Their weapons jammed up, their malfunctioning power armour and robotic bodies barely let them move. The eyeless shape opened up its grey arms, and the chamber started shuddering.

Words got stuck in my throat, I could barely breathe in the cold that pierced me to the bones. Imudon was struggling with his bolter to no avail. Arothron who had reached the abomination reeled backwards, the clawed mechadendrite that struck the fog turned into a formless metal stripe that hung limp and useless. The next wave knocked me down. The melta gun fell apart in my hands as I fell on my side.

Only Tehuti's blade was still burning when all the lamps died out. On shaky legs, step by step, he reached the grey shape and hacked at its horrible face that leaned over him. The fog swayed in the warm light that shone brighter than the abomination's pallid glow. At the backlash Tehuti fell to one knee. With effort he raised the blade again with both hands and struck with all remaining strength. The grip of cold ceased for a moment.

Tehuti cried out a single word. The tesseract labyrinth flew through the air from the Lady's hand. There was a deafening outburst, and the lamps lit up. I got up to my feet and stretched my frozen arms. The fighters were coming back to their senses, their armour and bodies covered in hoarfrost.

Fluffster walked up to the Necron leaders examining the labyrinth.

'Congratulations, Phaeron,' I heard the translated phrase in my vox bead.

Tehuti shook his head. 'I do not like how it ended, sage. It seems to have entered the trap that easy so that we carried it to our kingdom.'

'Let us store it on an abandoned moon of the Lost Worlds,' suggested the Lady of the Library.'

'I will order to transport everything necessary for the sample examination there,' said Tehuti.

'That is utterly abominable!' the General banged his weapon on the floor. 'Ruin embodied. We will have to warn the Silent King, Your Grace. Let me deal with that on the return.'

'It is necessary indeed. The thing is something from the times of past awakening again. Our goal is to recall what it is exactly.'

Tetraodon was scrolling through a long report from the ship control center muttering something in binary.

'Worse than I thought, m'lady,' he said when I came closer. 'The warp drive has been ruined in seconds. The same kind of damage as the samples I exposed to the tainted pieces. The very structure of the material destroyed like here.' He looked up at the hole in the vault and clenched his fist.

'The remains of the STC should be properly dissected and examined,' said Fluffster. 'I will personally describe the case to high agents of Terra.'

'I'm not sure whether we can get out of here soon.' Tetraodon pointed at the report.

Fluffster opened the map on his slate. 'Use your void drives to enter the Webway through the portal of Flotsam. There is a trading city nearby where it will be quite safe to have the repairs done.'

'Without us then,' Verrox bellowed shaking off hoarfrost. 'We won't have time to wait until it's over. We're heading back to Medusa to kick some ass.'

When both armies left the ship, I headed back to my compartment. This strange adventure was over but the hunt for the Mockingbird was still going on.


	42. Episode 5 - Epilogue

Epilogue

Clouds had melted away in the afternoon, and the sun shone on the garden still wet with rainwater. Inwit's short summer was coming to an end. An hour till sunset, chilly winds were already blowing from the lake behind the cottage village. Panaque picked up ripe apples from under the old apple tree and squinted at the owl parked at the fence. Lady Volentia's old mobile home that was now his. The home he had to fill with new members of his own crew.

He ran up the wooden stairs and pushed the door. The cottage Lord Asterolepis had found for him was small but cozy and quite close to the factory cluster where Panaque was working on the case. A place to maybe spend a whole life in, he thought listening to the cheerful laughter from the kitchen where Uncle and Aurita Aracana, his only acolyte from the locals, were preparing a special meal for Lord Asterolepis' visit. Aurita was his best encounter on Inwit. He had got contacts of Fluffster's technopath acquaintances to find a guide to the peculiar industry claimed by some to have stayed intact since the Dark Age of Technology. Aurita's calm and practical attitude let Panaque feel like home in a place where Inquisitors weren't very welcome. Just a month after the arrival Inwit had become real home for his little family.

He sneaked into the kitchen door and ruffled Aurita's hair as she was pouring flour into the baking machine. She patted his cheek with a laugh. Apples slipped out of his hand and rolled across the table. Uncle turned towards him from the grill.

'You said he'll arrive at eight, boy?' Though his acolyte by official documents, Uncle was more of an adoptive father for him, like for Lady Volentia. Panaque knew Uncle was still smitten by the breakup of his old crew but now the old mercenary was recovering in their company.

'Aye, he'll send a message when he leaves the forge.'

'Let's cut the apples for the pastry filling.' Aurita put the already washed apples on the table.

Uncle took an apple and bit on its red side. 'What fine apples they grow here. On my homeworld there was a trader who claimed to bring his goods from Segmentum Solar. Once he found Terran sorts of pears and apples for the New Year Day. Those apples tasted just the same.'

'Fluffster told me Lord Asterolepis is so eccentric,' Panaque said giggling. 'He almost never eats anything but his strange mixtures and always wears a mask outside of his citadel. What if he just feels lazy to attend those boring meetings so he sends another double to nod with an air of importance?'

Panaque mixed the cut apples with sugar and spices and put them into the filling container of the machine. They had two hours ahead to sort the data they had collected for Lord Asterolepis. To boast the team's first success. If they're that lucky in future, the noose will close around the enigmatic King-in-Black soon.

At eight the sun had set, and twilight was falling over the village. The meal was steaming on the big table in the dining room they only used for occasional guest visits. When Panaque heard the sound of car from the village street, he adjusted the rosette shining on his lapel and walked out to the porch, followed by his dressed-up acolytes.

The garden gate slid aside. A tall man in a dark robe strode in, flanked by two bodyguards in armoured suits. Panaque had seen him on the picts only and recognized the High Inquisitor's famous face mask of polished metal he didn't take off even at formal receptions. Asterolepis went up the porch stairs with a soldier's firm tread. He nodded to Panaque's courteous bow and gave out his gloved hand.

'Glad to meet you in person, colleague.' His mechanical voice reminded Panaque of rumours about Asterolepis' grave wounds that had left him with half of his body replaced with augmetics.

Panaque shook his stiff fingers, trying not to show confusion. After the others had exchanged their greetings, Panaque led Asterolepis to the dining room.

Asterolepis sat down on his assigned seat at the head of the table but shook his head when Aurita took the napkin off the big plate with grilled meat. 'Thank you for your hospitality, but I usually avoid eating in public. I am sure that my acolytes will appreciate your cuisine.'

During the meal Asterolepis mostly asked them polite questions about their life on Inwit though Panaque was burning with desire to boast his latest discoveries. Only when the supper was over, they proceeded to the cabinet where Panaque opened the priceless camera shots on his cogitator.

'First three attempts failed. The old fellow's quite cunning so I guess he detected my agents. But then I managed to hire the service of a Callidus assassin who was returning from a mission on the border. She disguised herself as a janitor to make a few picts. Well, I know I didn't have the right without official permission but as long as no harm has been done…'

He zoomed in and turned up the screen brightness. A rainy day in a big factory cluster. A hulking white-haired man with a shaggy beard towers over his retinue of tech-adepts and bodyguards, his black cloak standing out against the grey wall.

'He's a heavy drunkard I bet.' Panaque chuckled pointing at the old man's swollen eyes.

Asterolepis nodded. 'I also heard he is often consuming excess alcohol as of lately.'

'It's damn hard to catch him unawares. But there's another lucky discovery. Miss Aracana has found out through her own Mechanicus connections that the King will attend a private exhibition of arms and supplies. I wish we could catch him red-handed with some spare parts for… maybe even those… self-aware artificial constructs, Men of Iron!'

'The local technicians are called technopaths, Inquisitor. A deviation from the Mechanicus procedures sanctioned by the Master of Mankind himself,' Asterolepis corrected him.

Panaque smiled. 'Well, I often call them 'quirky Mechanicus'.'

Asterolepis shook his head. 'What can you say about the old local rumor that that the King himself can be a Man of Iron? Some folks say that some dumb noble brought an inactive Abominable Intelligence from his illegal dig somehere in Segmentum Obscurus. That abomination woke up, slaughtered the whole household and took his place.'

'I doubt they're that smart, sir. A robotic tycoon sounds just ridiculous!'

'In times before the Age of Strife, I read in an old book,' said Aurita, 'Men of Iron could even lead expeditions to distant star clusters. People obeyed them.'

Panaque shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, my old buddy Imudon, an Astartes... captain of some fame, used to say that in old times robots could be smart like people but now people are often dumb like robots.'

'Your fellow seem to think ill of humankind, may the Emperor be his Judge,' said Asterolepis. 'But what are your plans for the exhibition itself?'

'I want to approach the King in person. If I manage to obtain his DNA sample, it will be easier to find out more about his biography. Maybe you'll provide me with military forces if we find viable proofs to arrest him.'

'Aren't you afraid of a man that powerful, Inquisitor? He might retaliate.'

Panaque cracked a cheerful smile. 'Let him fear the power of the Holy Inquisition.'


	43. Episode 6 - The Art of Being a Stranger

Prologue

Ra Endymion ran off. He kept on running through deserted pathways of the Webway with a searing wound in his heart. Daemons howled behind his back, and the abominable voice inside his mind answered their call. Permanent shadow hid everything from sight but a thin stripe of the road ahead. Aether-creatures scattered before him like animals before a forest fire.

He stopped for a second when his heart was about to leap out of his chest but ran again. Far, unimaginably far from the Impossible City where he had seen the Master of Mankind bleed. The One Whose only presence made the Neverborn burn without trace. The One whom the others saw as a warlord, a savant, a stranger. In whom the jaded scions of Mars had seen the living incarnation of the Machine God they worshipped, the deity that kept in motion all things natural and crafted. He had asked whether he was capable of becoming a true Champion of His light. Or even something much greater. He knew not for he was but a simple human. The son of a water-thief.

He had asked about the thing that emerged from the depths of the warp and led the unholy horde against His forces. Impossible to admit on the battlefield for a warrior of his rank, but he felt fear. For his Lord who had left His throne to combat a foe older than humanity. For himself for he was but a simple human. A vague feeling of trouble he had tried to suppress that grew into terror when he saw drops of blood running down the Emperor's golden armour. The murderous sword stuck in his soul, he ran off at his Lord's order.

There was a limit for even superhuman fighters of the Ten Thousand. His legs numb, his chest on fire, he called without a hope to be heard. 'Do You hear me?'

'I am here with you.' A voice of tremendous might shook the shaded paths. As if the whole universe shivered.

Ra Endymion staggered and fell to his knees. The daemon inside squealed in terror, for the first time since it had dared to approach the Master of Mankind. Radiance flooded his dying mind. He shouldn't let the daemon go. He shouldn't.

A hand touched his helmet. He opened his eyes with effort to look at the stranger. A smiling man with lustrous golden skin helped him to stand up.

'I need to run.' Ra Endymion's voice was a faint whisper.

The stranger's soft laughter rang in his ears. 'You've already run into the right person. Another minute, Custodian, and your body would have turned to ashes.

'Who are you?'

'Your luck.'

The stranger touched his dusty breastplate, and pain left Ra Endymion. His eyes watered, his heart skipped a beat but he watched. The horrible sword was there in the stranger's smoking hands. Terrible strain distorted the stranger's golden face as he held the daemon writhing out of his grip.

'It cannot be vanquished. You will die.'

'I won't.' The stranger smiled through torment. 'I will carry it away before the one who forged it retrieves the foul masterpiece.'

'Where shall I go now? I haven't lived by myself since Captain-General Valdor took me away from my mother's home.'

'That's not up to me to tell you. Ask the One who sent you here.'

Ra Endymion was alone again on the crossroads of vast, long abandoned pathways. Radiance was everywhere, leaking through the walls. Daemons who had pursued him vanished in the dazzling light like smoke melts in the air. He didn't dare to guess what had happened far away, beyond the Eternity Gate.

Aether-creatures slipped by, undisturbed by his presence. Ahead in the distance spires of glimmering crystal towered over a sea of spectral mist. He stayed on the crossroads for a few moments, then strode forward to the derelict city.


	44. Episode 6 Chapter 1

Magos Tetraodon stayed with us in the City of Mist while his adepts and servitors were repairing his ship's warp drive wrecked by the bleak shadow. The colony of runaways and smugglers of many races and jobs was buzzing under the sunless vaults. Still puzzled by the wonders and horrors we had encountered during the pursuit of the gull, I walked the streets, lost in the motley crowd. Noisy Flotsam seemed to be but a backwater village when I gazed at the ancient megapolis built of golden living metal and sparkling crystal. Generations of dwellers had rebuilt spires and pavilions ravaged by old wars. The protective aura of the place silenced the ghost's voice so I stayed completely on my own while Fluffster had dedicated himself to the repairs and data analysis along with Imudon. Aphedron either spent his time with Marilyna to enjoy their last days together or went carousing to the city. My mind too fuzzy to concentrate on my tech practice or even needlework, I loitered through the trading districts.

An earlier me, a wannabe-Puritan, should have been terrified by the xenos domain and rogue humans who crafted and traded strange goods within the city walls. A band of brightly dressed Harlequins had just finished their performance on a large square surrounded by thousands of stalls with gems and potions, armour and weapons. A single square was as vast as half of Flotsam.

'These are from the retinue of the Great Fool himself,' an Exodite merchant said in High Gothic to his human neighbour. 'They always pay the double price. It's known you'll be lucky afterwards if they buy just an ounce of your goods.'

'They've celebrated another victory today in the inn across the big bridge. Beasts of smoke broke through a wall rift at Seven Deaths, they say.'

I stopped when a familiar phrase reached my ears. As if choosing between gowns displayed on the stall, I tried to catch a few more words.

The human trader noticed me first. 'Girl, buy a good robe. And a fine cuirass from my knife-eared friend. It's a shame to run around in your rags!'

'When I have more coins in my pocket,' I replied with a sigh.

'Go find a job in an inn or a workshop. Lots of guests arrive in these months, innkeepers and craftmasters would be glad to get another pair of hands. Just round the corner there's a lace shop. Mistress Sinneag won't mind a human pupil, and her laces sell very well.'

'Thank you, I'll consider that. May I ask a question before I go?'

'Only one. Usually I take money for answers but I make exceptions for young girls.' He winked at me.

'The smoke beasts. I've heard about them a while ago, when our vessel went by Iarmailt. Are they not a legend?'

'I wish they were,' the trader grunted. 'My friend can tell you amusing stories about them.'

'Iarmailt had been a cursed place, until the warriors of Altansar destroyed it. The beasts are heralds of the dreadful ship once led by the one whom the Drukhari call the Consort of the Void,' whispered the Exodite and put his finger to his lips.

'The Scarlet Serpent?'

The Exodite's face went deadly pale. He clenched his fists and swung at me.

'Bugger off, you filthy mon-keigh! How you dare, to say this aloud!'

The human seller of clothes pushed me from his stall. I ran away and didn't stop till their curses got muffled by the marketplace noise. Ancient horrors I'd seen in the Casbah were still alive here. More than mere tales. Something citizens of the Imperium never encounter, guarded by His power. Even large sums of money wouldn't loosen their tongues.

I slowed down on a hazy path between the market and a crystalline garden. Transparent boughs swayed in the breeze over the fine latticework of the fence. Frail night flowers were opening their petals as artificial night was descending to the city. Warp-creatures slid between the branches like fleeting sparks, too quick to see their shapes. It's safe where they roam free, I'd heard from the traders. Timid and defenceless before Neverborn predators, they flee and hide once a daemon appears nearby. The port had been left far away behind the maze of bridges and pathways whimsically twisting around the big square. Ahead, separated from the stalls by the stripe of the garden, lay the Mercenary Quarter.

A decorated stairway led downhill to the valley where fighters honed their skills and warlords bargained with rugged captains. Bronze walls of a War-Shrine towered over the quarter atop a hill in the center. Raging fires in large bowls on every corner cast red light on the images of Aspects of Khaine carved over the gates. At another gust of wind a bright flash lit up the Swooping Hawk charging on outspread wings. I recalled the white-clad stranger who had won the contest with a strange verse. He didn't look much like his Eldar kin but claimed the Cronesword for himself.

Aphedron should be there now. He preferred the company of soldiers in mercenary bars to the tech-adepts aboard Tetraodon's ship save Marilyna. It would be safer to find him than to walk to the port alone in the dark.

A noisy presence of a xenos band reached my mind even before I saw them. The Harlequins who had performed before the market guests. They should know more but asking them meant death. Fluffster had shown me their garbs of rank after we had arrived to the city, so I recognized the skull masks of Death Jesters and the featureless visage of a Shadowseer. I stepped aside to let them go downstairs first but the Shadowseer stopped and said a few words to the others. They paced towards me in a half-circle as if to round me up at the railing over the slope.

I darted back but the Shadowseer grabbed me by both arms before I could draw my weapons. The mirror-face leaned over me, and I shut my eyes not to look at its surface that could reflect the most horrifying visions. My forearms went numb, cold psychic mist enveloped my mind so I couldn't reach out. And be found. The xenos exchanged a couple brief phrases. Another Harlequin shoved me in the back.

'It's been a while since scum like you dared to appear here,' he said in High Gothic, and I felt a blade touch my neck.

'I'm here not to wage war.'

I gasped at a hard slap in the face. 'Morons at the market haven't even noticed you.'

'Where will you take me?' I could hardly breathe at the growing pain in my chest.

'To a place where your puppeteer cannot find you. When we learn everything you know, your body will be burnt on the big square, and your filthy ashes will be dumped to the warp where you belong.'

'Well, let us...' I started, but the Shadowseer's psychic grip squeezed my throat.

'You will speak only when we ask you questions about your master.'

Even Aphedron wasn't strong enough to take me away from my captors. The damn mark. They had noticed the mark. I tried to say a prayer but heard the Dark Apostle's cackle instead. The Shadowseer backlashed with a sharp blow that set my mind on fire. Tears ran down my face as the Harlequins dragged me down the stairs. They led me past the War-Shrine where a mixed band of Aspect Warriors recoiled and drew their weapons at the sight. One shouted a short phrase that sounded like a curse. My captors stopped and asked him a question. He pointed at a row of bronze columns behind the fire bowl where three Incubi in sinister black armour were talking in a wall niche.

The tallest Incubus who carried a golden klaive and three black daggers on his hips turned to the newcomers and nodded his spiked helmet. He examined my face, then touched my carapace on the midriff where the mark had been. They talked in anxious voices, pronouncing some words in a barely heard whisper.

'Grab his klaive,' the Dark Apostle spoke again. 'I will blind their souls for a moment.'

Not again, I sent back. Things you offer are always too pricey. I let the captors push me in through the rune-engraved bronze gates to the shaded arched nave. Lamps of glowing crystal were swinging over the row of doors that led to training grounds of different Aspects. Voices and steps of devoted warriors echoed in the flowy vaults crafted by pure thought. Like on Iarmailt, the nave ended with a majestic stairway to the inner chamber where the fiery fragment of the Old One watched over his army from his lofty throne.

Among many Eldar going up and down the steps I noticed two humans in familiar-looking power armour. One of them, unusually tall even for a space marine, watched my captors from under the hood of his grey robe. A giant sword hilt shaped like a pair of wings glimmered over his shoulder in the reddish light of torches and crystals. I nodded at him, not even hoping for help. He made a sign to his companion clad in an armour suit of mismatched parts, then ran down to intercept the party.

My captors headed towards the stairway. He addressed them in their own tongue, and they replied as if they already knew him well. After a few minutes of ardent discussion the Incubus shook his head and looked at the Shadowseer. She let go of my wrists with a sigh. The tall warrior put his arm around my shoulder and hurried back to his waiting companion. Only when the Harlequins and the Incubus left the nave, he leaned over to me.

'Now tell me who are you and why are you there. But be honest, lest I give you back to the Master of Investigation.'

'I'm an Inquisitor of Ordo Hereticus, sir.' I pulled the rosette out of my inner pocket. I knew I shouldn't ask him the same until he named himself.

'Not surprised. Your kind is very willing to soil themselves in all kinds of foul things.'

'They caught me because of the mark, didn't they?' I asked him blatantly.

'You should have known that before coming to the city.'

'I had to stop here on the way to find out more about the one who marked me with this abominable sign.'

'That sounds curious.' His tone softened. 'Strange why you haven't taken your retinue along.'

'I've arrived on an Explorator vessel with the only remaining member of my team, a tricky man beyond my control and understanding. And with two men who used to be my enemies.' I felt like sharing what bothered me since the breakup of my family. 'Magos Tetraodon will have to return to his forge world, so I'm in need of a vessel to keep up with the bloody gull ship I'm chasing.'

'Well, let's strike a deal before the formidable visage of the Warrior Lord. I have a few matters to solve here, so when your friend embarks, go to the port and find the Stray Cat, my friend and adjutant you see by my side. Keep in mind I'll find a way to get you behind bars if you ditch me.'

I frowned. 'So you're a human Aspect worshipper?'

'The Old Ones deserve to be honoured but it's unbecoming to worship them as gods. Even memories of them have turned into stupid legends of cold-blooded aliens or Eldar myths where bits of truth are weaved into millenia-long fantasies.'

'The Avatar of Iarmailt dealt grave wounds to the Beast before my eyes.'

'When he was whole, legions of daemons and even worse things would burn in the flame of his wrath. He was furious fire but there are but sparks left.'

'She who cast down the Warrior and turned his flame to ashes.' A stray phrase from my first missions left my lips against my will. Torches on both sides of the stairway flickered for a moment.

The Stray Cat growled a muffled curse. Glowing scarlet spirals from a madman's diary flashed in my mind. The mark answered with a jab of pain in my heart.

'You're mad.' The stranger shook me by the collar so my teeth rattled. 'I bet that was you who scared the traders with words even the bravest avoid here.'

The wisest would be to change the subject. 'Sorry, man. Let's better figure out the details of our business cooperation. First of all, your price.'

'I'm after the same knowledge as you. We'll just share the loot.'

'So you bailed me out because you need a live bait?'

He hummed. 'Not so cynical. We can become allies in this obscure quest. I know that your friend Lord Crinitus has made many efforts to cast light on that menacing mystery.'

'Don't you know way too much about my affairs?'

'That doesn't matter. It's time for you to go back. The Stray Cat will see you to the door of your ship.'

I pursed my lips. 'My swordsman should be somewhere here. He frequents the local fighting pits and bars.'

'When you're in my custody, you shouldn't get out to the city. The spiky sheriff of this place will kill you if he sees you roaming around alone. Send a message to the Stray Cat on the day Tetraodon will be leaving.'

On the way back the Stray Cat didn't say a word. I tried to ask him questions or tell jokes but he only shook his plain helmets. There was no way to find out who both men were. My hooded rescuer had no emblems or marks on his armour the colour of dark steel. Pieces of the Stray Cat's armour were battered and peeled, a few had sigils of unknown chapters or warbands.

Streets were calm and fully dark by now. Carousers enjoyed night life in the brightly lit noisy quarters around the marketplace but sounds died out just at another turn of the weirdly twisted road. A shadowy figure with long silvery hair slipped out of an arched gallery, sparks of green flame flickering over their obsidian skin. The Stray Cat uttered a phrase in the Eldar language, and it disappeared among crystal trees. A vaguely familiar tone struck me but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it.

'Just a mandrake,' he grunted when he saw my puzzled face. 'They're many as shit here.'

'Not that. I bet I ran into you in one of my ventures.'

He answered nothing but increased his pace. Maybe it was just voice distortion by the dynamics of his beat-up helmet. We passed through the never-sleeping port in silence, and I found my small lighter parked next to Harlequin jetbikes and Phoenixes of Aeldari corsairs.

Imudon met me on the docking deck when we reached our ship stationed in a vast vault above the city. He put his hand on the bolter hilt on seeing my fishy guide.

'Volentia, we've already lost you. I told you not to wander to the city alone. Human strangers aren't welcome here.'

'You know I don't feel easy away from my family. In the company of people who wanted to kill me for years.'

'Not the matter to be discussed in the presence of guests. And it's not really polite to mention it after a whole mission all together.'

'So meet the Stray Cat, my new buddy. I've just found a ship that takes us to the gull's nest.'

Imudon gave his hand to the stranger, and the Stray Cat shook it after a pause.

'We were no friends, true,' said Imudon. 'But I'm glad to see you alive, Monas.'

'Alive is too optimistic of a word,' the Stray Cat growled.

'Come in for a bottle of beer. Aphedron won't be that welcoming but I'll speak with him.'

The number of Imudon's acquaintances had always surprised me, in comparison with his introverted attitude. Profession and legion specificity, I thought as they headed to the marines' quarters.

It took a week to finish the repairs. Bored by my idle seclusion, I immediately typed a message to the coordinates left by the Stray Cat. We shook hands with Magos Tetraodon hoping for future encounters. Marilyna's eyes were red with tears as she hopped onto a crate and threw her arms around Aphedron's neck. Another piece of my past was sailing away.

Fluffster had taken the news of my latest bargain with indifference but my arrest interested him more than I thought. He had asked me in detail about the band of Harlequins and the sheriff Incubus.

Unlike him and Aphedron, Imudon felt very suspicious. His native paranoia had even grown after his separation from his warhost, with a deadly enemy following us. You should have found his name, he reproached me, you should have learned more before striking another deal that could screw us. I spared him from the most disturbing details of the conversation so he didn't nag me worse.

The Voice of the Emperor was a small frigate with a loyalist name I hadn't expected to see and only half of an usual crew on board. When our new host descended from the bridge to greet us, I sensed confusion in Imudon's mind. The hooded stranger headed to him first and gave out his gauntlet for a handshake.

'Rejoiced to meet you again, brother Selaphiel.'

Imudon answered with a dry nod. Aphedron smirked. When a shuttle brought us to the living quarters, I couldn't help asking a question.

'Another alias of yours?'

'We've had a few joint ventures. But past is past. Too many people of old times come in my way.'

'Like Fluffster. With a fake name like that, you should have found a job with the Dark Angels.'

He turned away and headed to his room. Soon a faint noise of starting engines reached the living rooms. I threw my bag on the couch and followed Fluffster to the bridge.

'He didn't even let us discuss the course before embarking,' I complained on the way.

'Because we don't know where to go, unlike our friend,' he replied in his usual calm tone. 'The stolen STC was an only clue but he has been watching other traces in the warp for centuries.'

'Of course, he's one of your agents. You were silent till our escape from the Macan Kumbang.'

'I didn't want our enemies to find out who I am.'

'You used me and my retinue as a cover for your operations.'

Fluffster shrugged his shoulders. 'It indeed worked. This man isn't my agent but I know him for very long. Does the name Cypher sound familiar to you?'

'Not at all.'

'Just be smart and don't send out requests. Don't give out our location.'

The ship was moving through the tumultuous waves of the Immaterium to unknown lands beyond the Imperial borders. During the previous lengthy trip I'd got used to seeing my ex-enemies daily but it still felt sad to recall evening hours in the mess with my old crew. Fluffster was almost always away to the ship library or the Machine Spirit chamber, Aphedron spent hours at the training grounds or in the mercenary mess with the Stray Cat and a few other runagate marines. Now nothing prevented the ghost from talking but he was also hushed. Earlier his mean phrases would have distressed me but during the circuit-assembling practice he was the only advisor to rely on after Tetraodon's departure. I tried to talk to Imudon but he preferred staying alone in his cell, probably to avoid that fellow he named Cypher.

In sour mood after another short grumpy conversation, I went to the bridge. Constructed and fortified specially for off-road travels, the vessel was different from rogue trader frigates we used to hire. The command throne was enclosed under a semi-opaque dome like seer pavilions of Aeldari Craftworlds, the passage to the navigator spire was sealed with a solid door engraved with protective sigils. Even the oculus was usually shielded by an anti-psychic screen. Members of the crew seldom left their posts to wander through the ship, usually staying in their secure rooms when not on duty.

Cypher the ship captain himself watched over the flight in his crystal cell. I waited till he stood up from the throne to change places with the first mate. When he descended to a lower platform with augur screens, I walked up to the stairway. He took off his helmet and leaned to a drawer under the control panel. A thermos of unpainted metal took its place in the magnetic holder on the panel. On seeing me he took two mugs out of the drawer.

'Hope everything goes fine, sir.' I bowed my head as I stepped on the platform.

He smiled. His well-proportioned features were nevertheless so plain they were hard to notice in a crowd or even recall afterwards. Average in the best sense. I sat next to him and took a sip of steaming tea from the crude porcelain mug.

'On Old Earth, there was a secluded island nation of Nihon. It existed so long ago its history became a distant lingering tale in the Panpacific Empire even during the Age of Strife. Noble warriors of that nation used to gather around a tea-table to pacify their spirits and get rid of fear. They favoured this kind of bowls and cups as there was simplicity in them as well as austerity. Impermanence that every warrior should keep in mind. My father loved to tell me stories like that when I was naught but a little sweet child.'

'A hint to stop returning to the past in my thoughts.' I looked at my troubled reflection on the green surface of my tea.

'Lord Crinitus praised your resilience and humility, my lady.'

'Even humility has its limits. I'm still the formal head of the team, but Fluffster deals with all important persons by himself. While I'm not even fully aware where are we going. I doubt the two guys will obey if I order them around.'

'Well, unlike my brothers, I'm no important person.' His eyes were smiling, and his tone was warm now. 'It's true, you feel like back to your apprenticeship again, but you're trusted to set off to much harder quests than other Hereticus Inquisitors. Drink another sip of tea like those knights of past to remember that service is the Way of the Warrior.'

'Grasping the nettle without gloves. So many things around that Fluffster takes by default. Like this city only Ordo Xenos operatives are supposed to visit. I'm starting to think he was too high-class for my band of misfits from the beginning.'

'Brace yourself, my lady, as we have to visit another domain of xenos.' He tapped on the screen to open the route map. 'Here's the goal of our trip you want to know. Caorthann, one of Maiden Worlds inhabited by the Exodites. Its dwellers know a few things about the mark you bear.'

'One more question, if you don't mind, sir.'

He nodded refilling our cups.

'You've known the man you called Selaphiel for very long.'

'He would object if I betrayed his secrets, my lady. All I can tell you, he means no harm to you. He just wants to be left alone. Like his brothers, he had to abandon so long ago'

'But he said he had stayed with Fluffster to stand against the menaces he had witnessed.'

Cypher cracked a reserved smile. 'Well, this does him even more credit.'

He turned his head to a shrill beep from the control panel dynamics. A pop-up window with a ciphered warning. He scrolled it with a swift move of his finger.

'Sorry to stop our pleasant conversation, but we've just bumped into a peculiar trace in the warp. We're close to the Seven Deaths everyone discussed in the city.'


	45. Episode 6 Chapter 2

Line after line of coded notifications lit up on the screen. The Voice of the Emperor had a warp-scanning device installed, so in a few seconds a blurred image appeared above the text. A bright spot vaguely reminding a rogue trader frigate surrounded by eerie bestial shapes and blurred spots of lesser daemons.

'Fresh traces of a shipwreck.' Cypher shook his head. 'Quite far from safe routes, but that's the drawback of rogue trade. The captain was probably going to the fairs of the City of Mist but warp foes are even more perilous than your peers that banish xeno goods.'

'Rogue traders are permitted to visit domains of xenos if they stay in touch with the Ordo,' I said.

'Anyway, the only thing that matters is the need to leave the warp unless we want to perish in the great Shadow.'

The log page torn out by the madman's hand. Scarlet letters in the cursed glass shard. 'Around... the red snake.'

'Wise to avoid naming it directly, my lady. Lord Crinitus told me about your investigation of the Alackaday cartel. Your worst bane kept you alive in the desert. But let's postpone the discussion till we see the derelict ship. I'll call my men to do reconnaissance once we're back to the realspace.'

I plucked up my courage. 'Please let me join them with my own crew, sir.'

'Thanks for volunteering, but I shouldn't disturb you.'

'It's a shame not to use veteran soldiers who also have to hone their skills.'

'Not only them.'

Blood rushed to my face. 'To be honest, I'm sick of being a failed leader of people who don't need a leader. They will at least respect me as a teammate if I fight side by side with them.'

'It will take time and efforts to win their trust. They're not people of this squalid millennium, who will eagerly follow almost anyone with shiny insignia.'

I sighed. 'Earlier, Fluffster used to explain the ways of humans and aliens. To mediate in uneasy deals with ancient warlords and kings. But he dedicated himself to tech-work after the world of the owl had collapsed.'

'You couldn't have stayed in the cradle forever. One day, everyone has to learn to think on their own. Especially when times of trouble are upon us.'

'My previous team valued my skills and business sense. But the old agent and two goons can do everything I did before but much better.'

He sent a message to the navigator, watching over the preparations for turning on the void engines. I looked down at my empty cup. Finally, he turned to me.

'True, they won't worship you as a big boss because they served under the greatest leaders in human history. But they will value you as a faithful friend. That's even better, isn't it? To be equal to noble warriors of old.'

I stood up and bowed my head. 'Please pardon the obnoxious stranger for all the useless whining.'

He answered with a friendly nod. 'I'd advise you to talk to Aphedron. Travelling aboard my ship is already too much for Imudon to bother him worse.'

During these hours of the day Aphedron was usually boozing with the mercenaries, so I ran down the stairway and headed to the mess. Non-marine members of the crew weren't very welcome there but I had the ship captain's order. To my surprise, I saw Imudon walking to the boozing ken. I overtook him in the middle of the corridor.

'Glad to finally find you out of your room, heading for a mug of beer among friends,' I said.

He put his finger to his lips. 'I must warn you, Volentia. There's a man whom you don't expect to see. He means no harm so don't panic.'

The door was wide open so rowdy talks were heard in the other end of the corridor. One voice definitely belonged to Aphedron, the other was so familiar I startled. Impossible. He had been lost to his own ambitious follies. Consumed by the entity of ultimate hunger.

'You lucky bastard!' the Panther king shouted. His resurrection, or, more likely, his escape from the clenched maw of the hungry monstrosity was impossible. Yet there he stood before me, battered but alive.

'That's how I left the filthy dens of Commorragh with a stark naked wych on my shoulder,' Aphedron went on with his youth stories. 'Just because she preferred men to knife-eared faggots. She stayed in my radiance for longer that I'd expected. Just because I managed to fill her little tight gap so that her soul didn't leak out. It was a little too tight, but i have solved this problem.'

His buddy roared with laughter at the obscene pun. 'I should have skedaddled from the old fellow in the city. Had no single spare hour to feel back to my merry years. But had to screw that. They all got wet for the King, flashy gold-diggers and Plodias bored by their slick husbands. The King, not a stray cat from a junkyard ship.'

I entered the room trying to look relaxed and cheerful. Both men were sitting at the table trashed with empty bottles. They were bareheaded, clad in just fatigues and carapaces, and the former Pirate King's face sent chills down my spine. Fresh scars crossed his bronze skin, his slanted eyes were swollen from constant boozing but his grin reminded me of his old self. Still it was sullen and frighteningly bitter. It was an expression of a man who had lost everything but his own hide.

Imudon just nodded, took a half-empty bottle and leaned against the wall.

'You're just in time, dear.' Aphedron greeted me with another of his dazzling smiles. 'Need some magnificence in your life?'

He sat me down on a chair next to himself. I took a folded plastic cup out of my pocket, and he poured me a shot of brightly coloured liquor.

'We've just stumbled upon a shipwreck. The captain suggests that we did a raid to the derelict vessel.'

'We?' the ex-King grunted. 'If we needed any help we'd call the Sea Lion or the Eraserhead, not a waif with a penknife and a flashlight.'

I gave him a smirk. 'But then the cat came back. I was sure I knew you when we walked to the port. But I wasn't aware you were that inedible. Leopardine predators turn out to be stray cats with ambitions.'

He drank another glass of brandy instead of an answer. I turned to Aphedron.

'Feels like I'm back to the fancy trip to Iarmailt.'

'I bet you're sorry to have missed the chance to taste the finest warp-dust. I don't think I want to see the fellow who makes it again.' He winked at me.

'Well, don't forget about my unwanted perk that is sometimes helpful.'

'Sounds reasonable.' He nodded at the Stray Cat. 'I say, smoke beasts cannot take her mind for the damn mark.'

The Stray Cat frowned. 'I've got free from the beast's influence anyway. And free from all my treasures. Dammit, fellas!'

A sharp psychic blow made me jump on my chair. My breath stopped for a second.

'Let me speak through you,' the ghost suddenly woke up. 'Let me! Let me have my vengeance against this loser!'

'Forgot to tell you about your precious teammate,' Aphedron told the Stray Cat chuckling. 'He's lost his last chance of a decent employment so he's found a new friend in Miss Volentia who's playing a game too shady to banish him safely.'

'Let me speak or I'll choke you,' the ghost hissed inside my mind.

'The ex-Warpsmith greets his King,' I said in a diplomatically neutral tone.

'Don't you call me King to my face, lass, I am no more royal than this son of a louse is corporeal,' the Stray Cat bellowed.

'Tell him he has to thank me for sitting here not rotting inside the monster's maw!' the ghost howled.

'He wants me to remind you about his role in your survival, Mr. Cat,' I said.

The Stray Cat's lips formed a crooked smile. 'Thanks to Him on Terra, not the Weasel.' He leapt to his feet and grabbed me by the shoulder. Imudon threw his emptied bottle to a garbage can and clenched his fists. The Stray Cat growled looking into my eyes, 'Weasel. Damn Weasel. I picked you among many other worthless garbagers of the ship to give you a decent job. Not because you were a fine soldier. Not because you were a fine craftsman. Just because the damn geneseed fit you. Otherwise you'd have finished as a marooned beggar. And now look at who you are now! An intelligent morning alarm! Like those warp toys you loved to buy. Have you ever repaired one for me?'

Aphedron shrugged his shoulders. 'He has turned into a marooned beggar indeed. Monas, let the girl go, she's not a bloody mic to shout into her face.'

The ghost's pissed voice shouted from Aphedron's mouth, 'I did my best to do the impossible job you had shoved off on me. The Despoiler would have killed me if the priest hadn't offered help.'

'Both the priest and the gull man dumped you,' said the Stray Cat.

'To the warp with you,' the ghost grunted and shut up.

'Back to the business.' Imudon reached for another bottle. 'Better take the girl along than the sour old bore. That's what you used to call me, Monas.'

'Aye, why not take the gal?' said Aphedron, to my relief. 'She needs work achievements to send to her puffy superiors lest they cut her wages. And it's my duty of a gallant cavalier to rescue the maiden fair from the obnoxious company of a confirmed widower and her broken warp personal assistant.'

'To rescue the old prude from a constant stiffy,' the Stray Cat shouted with a loud snicker.

The ship walls shuddered lightly as the Voice of the Emperor left the warp. When I was back to the bridge in my space suit, the heavy screen had been lifted from the oculus revealing the ink-black void. The dead husk of the ship drifted past us, not a single cut or burn on the hull. Frozen corpses were floating by open airlocks. Those who preferred death to the horrors that had overtaken the ship.

'They got so mad that started jumping overboard,' said Aphedron. 'I did that trick once, when I was high and wanted to check my newfound powers. She-Who-Thirsts brought me back, but in the middle of a space hulk a Segmentum away from my warband. Moreover, the Orks found it just in time when I prepared to leave it. We had a fine choppa party together. '

He put on his gilded helmet and walked towards the bridge airlock where the Stray Cat was waiting in full armour. I checked the arc rifle borrowed from Fluffster's locker. The Voice of the Emperor slowed down when it got side by side with the derelict ship. The inner door slid aside, and I saw the gaping dark hole of the ship entryway through the transparent outer doorleaves.

Aphedron stepped into the passage and gave me his hand. 'Shuttles are for wimps. Hold tight, like on the Macan Kumbang.'

The Stray Cat smacked him on the neck but Aphedron only chuckled. He pushed off the threshold, and I lost balance gliding into complete emptiness. Unsupported amid the starry abyss without up and down, like the soul's travel through the tides of aether. A slight thrust of Aphedron's armour reactor sent me forward. I gripped his gauntlet tighter trying to focus on the passage in front of us. Last time, during the escape from the doomed barge, adrenaline and haste hadn't let me feel lost in the void.

Aphedron reached the airlock first. With a habitual movement, he pushed away a body that blocked the way and pulled me in. I activated the magnetic boots and leaned against the closest wall, struck by a bout of warp-induced sickness. Gut-wrenching smell of musk oozed into my rebreather, filled my lungs. The Stray Cat who stepped behind growled a curse into the vox. Blessed kineblades, driven by Aphedron's will, glimmered in the beam of my flashlight.

The reactor had been turned off ,damaged or intact, and the passages we walked through were pitch dark. Still wall screens were animated by the malignant consciousness that had destroyed the vessel. Flashing lines of scarlet spirals were swirling over the blank surface, and I looked forward only, not to let the horrible call touch my mind. From time to time I saw brown stains of evaporated blood on the floors and walls. Sailors evaporated by the same smoke monsters who had flooded Atlas's ship years ago. As we were moving towards the bridge, the musk smell had gone choking. The shadow of alien hunger was lingering over bloodstained corridors and cabins trashed with armour pieces and weapons fragments where members of the crew had met their deaths in dozens. There were no barricades, the whole massacre would last only for a few dozens of seconds at best.

Both marines were scanning the rooms with their armour auspexes and exchanging brief phrases. None of the sailors had been left alive. We hadn't encountered daemonic entities yet but their stench was still too strong. When we got out of the living quarters, the Stray Cat pointed at the door leading to the chamber of the Machine Spirit. Firmly sealed on all ships that venture into the unknown, this one had been broken in half, holy protective sigils smashed in the most blasphemous manner. Piles of mauled augmetics and mechadendrites lay in pools of blood and amniotic liquid all over the platform. Guards loyal to the Omnissiah who had died protecting their sanctum from burglary.

'Somebody killed the enginseers to take control over the ship. Dismantled the Gellar field and disabled the reactor, all of this before the crew was slaughtered,' said the Stray Cat. 'We have to get in as quickly as possible and take the data logs for the old man.'

'Diasporex, enough said,' Aphedron chuckled.

Absolute silence. Sultry heat felt even through the space suit, in defiance to the eternal cold of space. Molten parts of guardian automata, fused into irreal shapes by psychic flame. Aphedron stopped between the data storage servers and the enclosed vault of the Spirit with his power sword in hand. While the Stray Cat knelt besides one of the servers to extract necessary data modules, I watched over the vault shell. It was palpitating even though it wasn't powered by the reactor.

Aphedron came closer and scanned the surface. In psyker-sight it looked like an egg ready to hatch. Inside pressure was growing since the moment the spirit touched by the monsters sensed live prey. Nets of tiny cracks appeared on the surface, thin gusts of smoke yet invisible to the eye started oozing out. Aphedron gave a shove to the Stray Cat who was putting the retrieved modules to the folders of his belt pouches.

The surface popped in a dozen places with a mighty psychic burst. Dirty smoke gushed from the tainted heart of the ship, weaving into bestial shapes.

'Fate's vengeance for the stupid death of the warlock who just took the bait,' grumbled the Stray Cat and drew his bolter. 'Let this scum taste my bolts.'

Aphedron met the attacking beast with his kineblades. 'Run to the reactor!' He yelled to me. 'Let's blow it up before it eats us.'

They stepped back under the furious assault of first monsters. One of the smoke beasts reached out for me but a blessed blade cut off its tendril. Clutching the arc rifle with both hands, I kicked open the narrow door that led to the reactor room. All locks disabled, an only advantage of the accident. I ran along the passage jumping over the remains of the automata until the flashlight beam lit up the hermetic bulkhead that separated the compartment from the server rooms.

Tumblers and screens around the manhole had been broken and burnt by the mutineers. I pushed the manhole and peeped into the compartment. Control machinery and reserve security systems hadn't taken much damage but the burglars had ensured that the reactor couldn't be turned on properly. Every attempt to launch the reaction would result in an explosion.

I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger. Blue energy blasts hit the control devices sector by sector. Flickering lightnings ran over the metal surface to the depth of the vast room overloading the circuits. The sensors of my space suit were weak but in a second they recorded a slight rise of temperature in the reactor core. I slammed the manhole shut and rushed back to the vault.

Aphedron was standing on his knees gripping his cracked helmet. The Stray Cat picked up the modules that had fallen out of his torn pouch, the bolter ready in the other hand. The monsters had been cut to small scraps of brume but smoke kept on streaming through the growing cracks, and they were reforging their sinister shapes for a new attack.

On seeing me they leapt back to their feet. The closest open airlock was on the bridge past the Machine Spirit chamber. I climbed on Aphedron's shoulder, and the marines rushed forth kicking aside pieces of metal and abandoned weaponry. Both were beginning to lose stamina and had already used their stim-packs but psychic pressure was barely bearable even for their altered biology. The mark that prevented me from passing out still tormented me with numbing pain in the midriff.

Temperature in the reactor was approaching the critical level. The marines reached the airlock together and plummeted into the calm of the void. Drifting between the hapless victims, I turned towards the welcoming lights of our ship. We had left the ship in half a kilometre from the initial entryway, so we headed to one of the airlocks of the docking decks. Mere minutes left till the explosion, we reached the ship and almost crawled into the doorway. The inner doorleaves closed behind our backs, and the ship swayed as pieces of the derelict vessel hit against the void shields.

'Why haven't I left you there, buddy? These funny animals ripped my visor to shreds when I visited their lair following your advice.' Aphedron gave the Stray Cat a nudge. 'I'm not cross with you only because I won our duel.'

'If I lost, that doesn't mean you won, showoff.'

'If not for a deal of luck, you'd have joined your poor illustrious daddy.'

I didn't take part in their conversation trying to recuperate after the sickening trip. When we reached the bridge, only debris in the oculus reminded of the derelict ship and its awakening menace. Cypher met us and took the modules without comments.

'I thought, Fluffster would be interested,' I said.

'He's a bit busy right now, my lady, so I'll tinker with them by myself. I'll inform you if we retrieve any important information.'

I got out of the bulky space suit and looked after the marines leaving the bridge for the infirmary for check-up. At least my part of the mission was performed without fails.

'You have questions to ask, Witch-hunter?' Cypher stopped before the stairway to the control panels.

'Just pondering over the mission. Whether I was of use.'

'These won't praise you every time like your previous team, but everything went fine if you all survived. That's what space marines and your Malleus colleagues call regular job.'

I smiled back and took one of the seats watching him download the data to his cogitator. Still better than going back to our rooms to my sourface ex-nemesis. 'It's crappy to feel like a novice when you can do your job well already.'

'It's always necessary to learn new jobs to hold on. This Black Crusade caught even ancients like Fluffster unawares. Plain Hereticus detectives die or fall in loads in Segmentum Obscurus. And, to be honest, in all other Segments too.'

For a few hours the Voice of the Emperor was going on subluminal speed through realspace while the navigator was looking for a safe entrance to the warp. I leaned back, barely able to keep my eyes open. Countless stars tinkled in the oculus against the dark void and glowing clouds of nebulae. Sleepy time of space travels that could last for weeks in earlier years when nothing happened at all. My dataslate and needlework bag were far away in my room so all I could do was to contemplate lines and columns of symbols on the cogitator screen.

'Curious, Inquisitor.' Finally, Cypher turned to me. 'The records state there was at least one survivor of the accident. Short before the reactor termination, one of the shuttles had left the ship. It should have a warp beacon installed, so our astropaths will trace the trajectory of the shuttle to find more about the outbreak.'

I looked up at the large auspex screen on the command pavilion. As the astropathic connection was established, the thin line of the route started building up across the void desert where the hapless refugees were doomed to starve far from inhabited systems, beyond the Imperial borders. Only seldom they were lucky enough to come across another trading vessel that heard their distress call. More often, they died of exposure or became prey to alien raiders. But now, if they were still alive, they had nothing to fear.

'Not quite so, young one.' Cypher was more skeptical than me. 'More likely that these are the very mutineers who completed the sacrifice. Or sailors already corrupted by the vile influence.'

The line terminated at a vague outline of an unknown object of tremendous size. A star-shaped construction larger than the famous Glorianas, drifting through no man's lands.

A worried voice sounded from the dynamics. 'My lord, Chief Astropath speaking. We sense growing warp radiance in close proximity. Expected arrival to the undefined object in two hours.'

'Incredible.' Cypher typed in quick orders for the crew. 'We have to get ready for docking. It gives out no signals but it might have dangerous squatters.'

'What's that? A lost void station?' I asked studying the object's presumed parameters.

'One of the most precious things in the whole galaxy. A Blackstone Fortress, one of few remaining. The refugees are no simple men, they knew where to go. They performed the dreadful ritual to get a clue how to bind this sentient relic to their will. But is this a morcel too big for them to swallow? What do you know about the Gothic Wars, Volentia?'

I recalled lessons about the previous Black Crusades Fluffster had given me.

'The campaigns led by the Despoiler against the Imperium when he tried to snatch the Blackstone Fortresses recovered by Imperial border guards.' I gasped.

'Only a bunch of living people knows their real value.'

I frowned at the memories of my second mission. 'It's fashionable to excavate pieces of blackstone but all even Magi can do is to stick pieces to their devices. Psyker teens in the canyon found shelter from the Iron Seer's eyes at null outcrops while they were able to see weird dreams near warp-amplifying rocks. The tower of remembrances Scalaria told me about.'

'Personally, I feel intimidated by the increasing discoveries of long-forgotten things from the Old War. Of long-forgotten enemies and monsters.'

By the time of the encounter I arrived to the docks with the space suit back on. I even made Imudon don his power armour and get out of his lair where he hid from his former superior. He stood in the back part of the docking deck apart from the main group. Fluffster, dressed in a Mechanicus space suit as well, was preparing the shuttles for boarding.

'Ship ready for docking. No one answers to our request. The warp beacon is currently located on one of the docking decks of the object. You may leave the ship in fifteen minutes.'

The timer counted to zero. The entryway door slid aside slowly. Cypher bowed his head and put his hand on the giant sword hilt over his shoulder. He stepped first into the passage, and we followed.


	46. Episode 6 Chapter 3

Pathways ran to all directions from the quiet chamber of the alien ship. Silvery walls of wraithbone and living metal were glowing both in the realspace and in psyker-sight like the Webway, another marvel created by the Old Ones in the aeons before humanity's awakening. Its outlines, a mixture of flowy and angular shapes, had a paradoxical similarity to both the inside of a craftworld and Necron constructs. Like blackstone, both psychic and blank, I recalled Fluffster's enigmatic comparison after the trip to Iarmailt. Subtle voices in the warp, but a shadow of long gone dwellers of the ship, were murmuring in the background.

While Cypher and the Sea Lion, a powerful marine psyker clad in black and white armour with a librarian's psychic hood, were getting our shuttles ready to move on, I tried to look out with my warp-sight. Too weak even in the ship's energy flow, I only managed to take a peek at the light of the beacon. Not a living soul around. The runaways had abandoned it here in the docking area.

I squinted at Fluffster scanning the walls with another arcane device. Quicker. Just a glimpse. My fingers found the shard in the belt pouch. Whispers turned to wails. The beacon was radiating through the mist, two tiny sparks were moving towards us at the very edge of my augmented vision. A burst of energy threw me to the wall. Caught in the growing storm, I cried out, my palm spasmed around the shard.

Imudon snatched it from my hand and stuffed it back into the pouch. 'I should have told you to leave it on board. The guards of the ship will sense the taint. They'll destroy anyone who draws daemonic menace to the Fortress.'

Cypher turned back to us and shook his head. There was a flash of bright white, and before I could say anything to my excuse, towering alien machines stepped out of the walls, rocking on three slender metal legs. They paced towards us from every side to round us up, similar in gait and looks to both Necron scarabs and smooth shapes of Aeldari wraithknights. In the middles of their polished bodies of living metal small tongues of warp-flame flickered with every step. Cypher folded his arms on his chest as purple beams crossed on our shuttles. I gripped the hilt of my pistol and pressed myself to Imudon's side.

Cypher cried out a single unword that was completely erased from my mind on the next moment. The machine guards reeled backwards and forwards, then stopped. Their raging psychic fires faded to flickering flamelets like before. Enuncia, the language of the Old Ones, I recalled the rumours spoken in whispers only even among the Inquisition ranks. The language of creation. The most unscrupulous operatives were ready to sacrifice everything for a single word that could bend the very reality to their will. But a word could kill those reckless who misused it.

'They have obeyed your order, sir,' I dared to address him.

He shrugged his shoulders as if we were talking about mundane affairs. 'My father taught some things to me when I was young.' Then he nodded to the Sea Lion. 'You'll drive one shuttle, I'll take the other. You'll catch the trail.'

I took a seat at the window, Imudon sat down next to me. While Fluffster was talking to Cypher in an unknown language over the control panels, I kept on staring at columns and arches we passed by.

'Was it really crafted by the Old Ones?' I said to Imudon.

'With their guidance at least,' he said. 'I tried to enter the first Fortress retrieved by Abaddon but even my current successor's help didn't let me reach the ship's heart. The ancient power designed to counter something worse than trivial daemons. We had to give it up when even shrine shadows proved unable to break through a horde of spindle drones.'

Packs of drones were following us, phasing in and out in numbers as we moved from chamber to chamber. Probably these vast docks would hold armadas of smaller vessels in the past but now the ship had been picked clean either by retreating dwellers or the luckiest among generations of robbers.

The shuttle with the trader's mark had been left by the runaways in one of inner dock chambers. Probably where it had been attacked by spindle drones. Though there were no traces of deaths or injuries. I felt only a lingering trail of a psyker's soul.

'There was a single survivor,' the Sea Lion reported through the vox. 'A human psyker. No presence of the taint that befell the ship detected.'

'The runaway was smart to leave the ship before the main outbreak,' said Fluffster.

'The trail leads to the heart of the ship. Most likely, he or she had managed to contact its quasi-sentience.'

'Hard to believe,' said Cypher. 'Only in case there are other sentient creatures present who have necessary knowledge. But the ship isn't merely drifting away, true. Slowly, through the realspace, but it seems to follow a set course.'

'I sense two intruders driving through the maze part of upper corridors,' said the Sea Lion. 'One of them is an Eldar, the other probably a human or someone from a non-psychic race.'

Fluffster scrolled down through the report of the shuttle's auspex. 'I wish we knew why the said person… persons haven't entered the warp for that long. The Fortress is meant to travel there but it was moving through the void even when the shuttle reached it.'

'Head to the center immediately,' Cypher ordered the Sea Lion.

'Sorry, lord,' Imudon suddenly objected. 'Shouldn't we interfere with the chase? The xeno is overtaking their rival. The auspex shows a human-type vehicle.'

Cypher nodded. 'I see no reasons against this.'

Our shuttles speeded up slipping through sode corridors. The moving points on the auspex screens got closer with every turn until we parted at another crossroads to emerge from both sides of another chamber right between the two. The Aeldari warrior in bright red armour stopped their jetbike, tail streamers with craftworld runes fluttering in the aether wind. None other than the Autarch who had been the last to compete with the White Hawk for the cronesword.

The other stranger, a marine as huge as Cypher in an oversized power armour suit of turquoise and blue, showed his clenched fist to the xeno and jumped down from his smoking assault bike pierced in many places by the xeno's shots. He had no Aquila sigils or Chaos stars on but his helmet had an ominous crest shaped like a coiled serpent.

'Don't you stand between me and this petty thief!' the Autarch shouted in High Gothic, reaching for his Bright Lance.

'He's one of our people. We stand for them like your kin defends theirs,' Cypher said calmly. 'Lay down your arms lest the guards vanquish you when your brawl draws daemons aboard.'

Under the guns of our shuttles and the unblinking stares of the drones' purple warp-lamps the xeno shrugged his shoulders and returned the lance to its hold. The marine kicked the decrepit bike already on fire and hobbled to our shuttle on strangely long legs. Imudon helped him get in and sat him down.

He sighed and cleared his throat. 'You're good loyal citizens of the Imperium, aren't you? I see an Inquisitor rosette on your suit, ma'am.'

I glimpsed at Cypher tapping on the panel. 'Well, at least some of us.'

'If so, you're truly blessed.' He paused for a second. 'I bet you cannot even imagine who is your guest. The last of his kind, the last of his loyal brethren.' He paused for even longer. 'The survivor of the twins. The Lord of Serpents. The Alpha-Null.'

He leaned over to me, the head of the serpent almost touching my helmet. After the most dramatic pause he whispered an impossible name.

'Omegon.'

Cypher slammed a data module into its stack with a loud clap. I startled despite all efforts to keep calm. It sounded insane. We had stumbled upon a real miracle among miracles. I wouldn't have believed it in earlier years but after so many great mysteries I had encountered while travelling with Fluffster it was predictable. I knew most of the Chapters weren't aware of the existence of another twin, the Alpha Legion thought to be orphaned after the death of Alpharius in a duel with Rogal Dorn on Pluto.

I grabbed his gauntlet. 'Lord. My lord. But how…'

Imudon didn't say a word, probably smitten by the sudden appearance even more than me.

'The Emperor Himself has tasked me with a mission separate from my brethren,' Omegon said. 'I'm combating Chaos from within and from without, and all servants of the Imperium are obliged to comply with all my requests as if they came from the Emperor. I see a flask of booze on your belt. It will please the Emperor's most beloved son.'

I took the flask off my belt and gave it to Omegon. He tried to move aside the lower plate of his visor but the helmet jammed.

'The part has wrenched out of its place, liege,' said Imudon. 'I guess it comes from a different pattern.'

'If you only knew, you modern ignoramus,' Omegon snapped. 'This is a set of artificer armour crafted for me by… Ferrus Manus himself in the days of the Great Crusade. I've been through thousands of great battles so some of its parts have suffered blows that could hack you in half.'

'What a fine primarch that doesn't even remember his own titles,' the Stray Cat grunted through the vox. 'I was there on the day the twins appeared before Horus. Even the chattering one of the two didn't ever tell so much bullshit. Tell him it's Aleph-Null, not 'Alpha'.'

I wanted to ask Omegon, true or false, what had he stolen from the Autarch but decided it would be too impolite. He didn't sound credible unlike our previous famous acquaintances, and Fluffster paid him no attention at all despite his lofty titles. I left him sip on the booze and headed towards the cabin.

'It leads to the heart of the ship,' I heard the Sea Lion's voice.

A distant surge of energy sent a ripple through the warp. It reached my soul, and I heard clear voices ringing far away. The ship coming alive.

'The heart is awake,' said Cypher. 'It's calling us.'

'The cyber-moth has reached the central area.' Fluffster pointed at the screen. 'Didn't expect such success. It detected the presence of two humanoids in the command center.'

'I see only one soul burning brighter than many,' said the Sea Lion. 'The other's a blunt then. Something seems to hide them from my warp-sight.'

Surrounded by spindle drones, the Autarch couldn't leave the chamber but when we moved away towards the star-shaped vessel's closest 'ray', he followed us with drones on both sides. When we left the twisted pathways of the dock area, Cypher speeded up. We were rushing through a vast gallery with arched vaults, wide enough for big ships to pass.

Far ahead, in tongues of radiant flame but not burning, a crystal pavilion towered above levels of platforms in the very center of a spacious hall. The living metal was gold and bright white here, giving the place a solemn look, crystals shifting many delicate colours in the light that flooded the center of the ship. The hall that had probably hosted great armies during the War in Heaven reminded me of the Seer Quarters of Ulthwe but also of Phaeron Tehuti's library. The quietude of eternity, a glimpse of the majestic era destroyed forever by the War.

The Autarch drove level with us and threw back his head to gaze at the shining pavilion. Once we reached the bottom platform, the wall of flames parted. Two humans stepped out of a portal sparkling with crystal runes set in white metal. One of them was a man in sleek golden armour, his tall helmet shaped like a crown of boughs. The other was a small woman in purple robes, the upper half of her face hidden under a finely crafted mask of silk and golden wire.

'Miss Volentia, dear Miss Volentia, is this really you?' suddenly a familiar psychic voice called me. 'That's me, Scalaria the astropath. So so happy to meet you here in the most impossible place!'

The woman raised both hands smiling. I waved back. 'Glad you're fine and alive! I heard about you from the Silent Judge a while ago.'

'Dear Magos Crinitus is also here! But... where are the others? Please don't tell they…'

'They're fine, just working in other places after the Black Crusade has begun. You may send them letters whenever you wish. But I've got new friends.'

'I'm keeping in touch with our folks. Intha serves on a Black Ship, Taphius is gonna become a real space marine!'

'I met him when we were returning to Pholiotina,' I answered. 'Sadly, Magos Tetraodon left for his own forge and couldn't meet you.'

She clapped her hands. 'So nice that he's also fine. Please acquaint me with your new buddies. What splendid warriors they are, aren't they?'

The man in golden armour was waiting for us to reach the platform in silence. When we stopped on the edge, he took off his helmet to reveal a smiling face with golden-hued skin as lustrous as the armour. Cypher stepped out first and shook hands with the strange man. Scalaria ran to us and threw her hands around my neck.

'Meet Imudon and Aphedron, veteran space marines currently employed by the Inquisition,' I said after we exchanged greetings. I hadn't told her about our earlier enmity so there'd be no unnecessary questions.

Aphedron, already bareheaded, walked out beside the Sea Lion. He leaned over Scalaria and kissed her hand. She smoothed her unruly dark hair. 'What a paragon of magnificence!'

'I've been called the Magnificent since my first days in the legion.' Aphedron showed his shiny teeth.

Imudon only nodded but when Scalaria gave out her hand, he shook it. Chattering and clapping her hands, she greeted the others while Cypher was talking to the golden man in a low voice.

The golden man raised his hand. 'You're all welcome to the greatest marvel remaining in our poor war-torn galaxy. Let me, a poor exiled beggar, invite you to its very heart. Ancient sage, warriors as ancient, young apprentice.' I instinctively covered the belt pouch with my palm as the shard stirred inside. The golden man only winked at me.

'And a primarch,' Omegon said in a sour voice. 'I'm Omegon the master of the Alpha Legion.'

The golden man looked at Cypher. 'Will the Last Configuration object?'

'Not at all.'

'Perfect.' He opened up his arms, and the fire around the front wall of the pavilion parted. Chains of aether lamps lit up along the smooth edges of its arched vaults. A wave of warp dizziness swept over my mind as sparkling mist enveloped us. On a high dais of living metal machines ablaze with multicolour plasma and seer crystals radiating in the psyker-sight there was a navigation throne under the very top of the pavilion.

'Isn't it pretty?' Scalaria pressed her hands together. 'Lucky Beggar, our host, says distant ancestors of the modern Aeldari chose their most powerful seers to drive this ship through the Sea of Souls. I begged him to at least try entering the warp but he refused.'

'The warp doesn't do well to my health, dear miss,' said the golden man. 'And I advise you not to forget about something hungry that you met not long ago. It seems to stalk us right now.' A complete blunt, he felt strange to my psyker's mind. Nor the cold void of a null field, nor a background glow of an usual soul not obscured by the pariah gene of the body. As if something prevented me from taking a glimpse. But for the weird skin colour and lustre, his face features were proportional and plain like Cypher's. Maybe even too plain. Both could have been just results of augmetic surgery but he still looked kinda out of place. Not the kind of a person one expects to meet aboard a Blackstone Fortress. Not the one to arrive to a place like this alone.

Scalaria was already telling something to Fluffster and the marines, a grimace of theatrical fright on her face. I finally took off my helmet and walked closer allowing Cypher to follow Lucky Beggar to the throne.

'Madmen, aren't they?' Scalaria raised her voice. 'They ordered the navigator to go on towards Seven Deaths after the floating shards. The place felt totally sick with this musk stench only growing stronger.' The Stray Cat turned away abruptly and headed towards Cypher. Scalaria shrugged her shoulders. 'Then the Shadow covered us. I got afraid, really afraid. I tried to talk to a few friendly members of the crew but they were looking forward to the treasures the Captain had promised them. The… red snake was near, they repeated on and on. Lucky Beggar told me not to call the thing by its real name.'

'I heard in the City of Mist, the Harlequins had attacked that monstrosity not long ago,' I said.

'Maybe. One day, echoes of deaths woke me up. The captain had the tech-adepts killed. There was an order to dismantle the Gellar Field, I heard from the mates' talks. The stench nearly choked me to death. It paralyzed the crew. Dirty smoke started leaking in. But for the soul binding, I couldn't have escaped.' Tears rolled from under her mask. 'They weren't mean to me but they died.' She covered her face with her hands, and Aphedron put his arm around her shoulders. Sobbing, she snuggled up to his armoured side.

I recalled the story of the cursed glass shard from the robbed mausoleum. 'Someone decided to repeat the crazy venture of captain Atlas and his friends.'

The Autarch who was standing in the doorway and hadn't spoken a single word since we had interfered with his chase after the wannabe primarch, made a few soundless steps towards us. 'What did they say in the Webway streets, human maiden?' he asked in High Gothic.

I paused. 'The traders said the Harlequins were from the retinue of the Great Fool and had battled the horrible ship… Something to do with… the Consort of the Void.'

'Our folk of Saim-Hann tells a different story. They say the Lord of Poisons was a brother to the Cosmic Serpent.' He ran his fingers across the craftworld rune on his armour. 'You were there when the stranger won the Cronesword, and the path of fate brings us to the same point again.'

'Your kindred was truly disturbed by his chant,' I said.

'They believed he was one of the Neverborn. But I have seen mysteries of life and death to laugh at their gossip. The stranger mimicked one of our kind like this petty thief pretends to be one of your race's… primarchs.' He spoke the last phrase intendedly loudly. Omegon tried to shrug but his armour jammed again, and he only showed his middle finger to the Autarch.

'So banal, so… human,' the Autarch said. 'A young race yet to grow up. But I must continue. The White Hawk mimicked us but had a different shade of soul-light. Not anything close to the Neverborn. He had a genuine Aspect armour that didn't reject him. Maybe the touch of the God of the Dead has changed him beyond recognition.' He finished his speech in a sinister whisper as Lucky Beggar looked at him smiling.

I nodded. 'Our host is as enigmatic.'

'The Yngir, our kind calls his peers. Once you get familiar with them, you learn how to recognize them in different guises.'

'Noble Autarch Ulchabhan the Windblown, let me greet you under the vaults of this wonder of your ancestors,' said Lucky Beggar. 'You seem to mistrust us but I don't return these feelings, to be honest. Why not share your story with other guests as lore is even more precious than the treasures of this place.'

Autarch Ulchabhan strode past Scalaria who was already purring something to Aphedron in a content tone. He moved smoothly but his aura betrayed confusion. Before the throne dais he stopped looking at the crystals that formed outlines of eerie runes.

'Some think the Cosmic Serpent was a chieftain or a god, some say it was the name of the greatest vessel built by mortal hands. These runes look familiar to those remaining in the hidden inner hall of Saim-Hann.'

'The Fortress is a greater masterpiece than even the Serpent. Than both of them,' said Lucky Beggar.

'And the Lord of Poisons?' I asked.

'The first of the Haemonculi,' said Fluffster before Ulchabhan could answer. 'Like the Consort was the first of the Lhamaeans.'

'And how could he be brother to a ship? A Machine Spirit likeness?'

'Quite close, human maiden,' said Ulchabhan. 'Both poisoner muses followed the path of this young seer's hapless captain but made it to the end.'

Lucky Beggar put his finger to his shining lips. 'I beg you not to speak of things like that openly, lords and ladies. The abomination has found our trail, so don't let it come too close.'

I looked at Cypher and Fluffster. 'Will we be able to sail further?'

'I would recommend to stay under our roof,' said Lucky Beggar. 'Or the Shadow falls upon you.' He pointed up at the crystal vault where stars were sparkling among the void behind the transparent roof. A large sharpened shard of glass was stuck to the surface from the other side, a stain of dark smoke stirring within.


	47. Episode 6 Chapter 4

Pain stung my midriff. I breathed out and rubbed both temples with my fingertips whispering the Litany of Protection. The Sea Lion was already standing on the top step of the dais, his shining glance reaching for the vault. He froze up in his psyker's trance for an unbearably long minute.

'I feel the Shadow coming closer,' he finally said. 'I hear the Beast's call from far away. More will appear after the first wisp of smoke.'

Lucky Beggar shrugged his shoulders. 'We're lucky, aren't we? The Fortress is following her course despite all attempts to stop us. We'll sail through the realspace for a week until we arrive to a long forgotten Dolmen Gate in the realm of a sleeping king. I knew the king well when he was leading his great army in ancient years but it's not up to me to wake him up.'

I watched them with a growing feeling of sickness. As if something heavy had come down upon me, breathing got hard. The shard inside the pouch was tossing about by itself, its malignant energy craved to break free. Imudon, Scalaria and Aphedron rushed towards me from both sides. The pavilion reeled around and collapsed upon me.

I came back to my senses in a small niche of golden living metal with peculiar mosaic patterns of blackstone on its ceiling and walls. Imudon was sitting on the wall ledge I lay on, the pouch already in his hands. My heart was still pounding but the midriff pain was ceding. Aphedron and Scalaria watched me on the other side of the ledge. In the entryway I saw Fluffster discussing something with Cypher and Lucky Beggar. A step behind, the scarlet shape of Ulchabhan stood out against silvery columns.

'You're awake, thanks to the Emperor!' Scalaria exclaimed.

I tried to get up but Imudon put his hand on my head. 'Have a rest. You've been out for a standard hour. The Autarch was sure you were dying because of this.' He pointed at the place where the mark had been.

'Don't you think… too much folks know about this pain in the a…' I couldn't finish the cuss as Fluffster walked up to me and gave me his paw.

'Bad news, the curses seem to amplify each other here. Good news, you didn't try to use your shard.'

'At least neither the ship nor our squatter host don't try to kill me for the mark,' I whispered.

Lucky Beggar smiled. 'I'm no squatter to this place.' He touched the wall of golden metal, and his hand merged with it, totally similar in colour and texture. Under awed stares he pulled it out easily.

'Aren't your kind not welcome to the creations of the Old Ones?' Ulchabhan said from behind.

Lucky Beggar's smile widened. 'A mighty ship like that still needed material engines and artificial brains. Why dig into these mysteries of old at all?'

'I'm afraid, the mark will draw the Dark Apostle's gaze towards us here,' I told Fluffster.

'You remember my own fail with a whole battalion of shadows,' Imudon answered instead. 'A direct assault might harm some of us though, so we'll watch you until we part ways in the Webway.'

'Maiden World Caorthann lies on the road to my own destination,' said Lucky Beggar.

'Where we find out more about the gull man,' I said.

Fluffster shook his head. 'Not the gull man exactly but the warrior Cypher is looking for has seen even more. The dwellers of Caorthann once escorted the warrior to the Great Tree of the Twin Moons that grows in the middle of the old woods so that he could speak to the Avatar living within its trunk.'

Still weak, I stayed in this quiet part of the Fortress for three standard days. Next to the contemplation niche there were living rooms encrusted with the same blackstone patterns. Lustrous psychic and matte null stone pieces were unexpectedly mixed in the runes and meandering lines, weaving a shield of charms around the place. It was probably the strange necrodermis-like golden metal that let them be combined without their powers clashing.

On the fourth morning I finally ventured out to take a look at the contemplation chambers of the uppermost level. Quite far from the bridge, this part of the ship was located in one of the rays of the giant star. My crew away for their business, the passages were empty and still, protected from outside threats by the finely crafted veil of wards. Spiral ladders of obsidian and sparkling crystal led to a long arcade of chambers with transparent walls and vaults.

Fiery runes lit up on the crystal surface as I passed by but faded behind my back after I left one chamber for the next one. The song of ancient souls flowed under the high vaults, fleeting images of alien memories flashed in my mind. Faces, wondrous cities of white and gold, armadas sailing through the depths of the void. Memories too distant to grasp, a mere shadow of vanished dwellers of the Fortress.

A soulfire brighter than any of human psykers shone ahead through the glow of the ship's placid aura. I stopped and touched my vox bead. Away from the others, I was no match for Autarch Ulchabhan if he decided to get rid of the small mon-keigh with a mark.

'Afraid of me, Inquisitor?' I suddenly heard Ulchabhan's chuckle in my head. 'The Yngir helmsman of the ship would object against murder within these sacred walls. And I don't feel like clashing with some abomination that might pop out of your body.' Relaxed by the calm, I had forgotten about psyker litanies to shield my thoughts.

I walked out of the chamber and stopped again in the shaded passage between the halls. Psychic light streamed out through the arched entrance, radiance flooded the vast hall. Ulchabhan's armour showed red like a bloodstain against the back wall. He was staring into the warp on top of a long platform under the rune-engraved vault. Aether fire lamps were hovering on both sides of his head, shifting colours.

'Seers human and alien, all look the same,' I sent to him. 'Be it a long abandoned outpost over a dying sun or an intersection world of lupines.'

'They were built by my ancestors when the Old Empire was at the peak of its might. Younger races just follow in our footsteps while we were the first to look up and see the stars,' he answered without turning his head. 'Come here. Soon your seer friend will arrive for her daily watch.'

Waves of radiance rolled over me when I ran up the stairs to the platform and sat down on the edge. Within a safe distance, I'd say if I didn't know the Eldar.

'The souls are speaking to us but I can't hear a word of their murmuring,' I said.

'Only a faded trail of their presence, human. The souls are gone long before the first of your kind got up on two legs.'

I traced the blackstone pattern on the platform with my finger. 'The Yngir helmsman on the ship of your race isn't the first occurrence I've seen. The snipers of Altansar…'

'That's why many think them to be jinxed,' he said before I could finish the phrase. 'But if you live within the Womb of Destruction, all means are good to survive. A shady Aspect many tend to shun, though I, a stranger from the craftworld of strangers, am determined to see even that with my own eyes. They harvest peculiar relics from croneworlds and derelict cities of the Webway. Staves and swords of the same golden living metal like the frame of this arcade.'

Two more soulfires lit up in the distance. Soon Scalaria walked in, her gait as firm as if her sight had returned to her. Her psyker abilities let her find the way through the ship with ease following aether trails running through the passages. Aphedron followed her, their minds linked with a current of energy so that she could see the place through his eyes.

'Hi, Volentia,' their psychic voices reached me in unison.

'Here for an hour of warp-gazing?' I sent back.

'An hour of rest,' said Scalaria. 'Here where the aether is at least filtered well.'

'Didn't expect the place would become that popular,' said Aphedron staring at Ulchabhan's back.

Ulchabhan didn't move. 'Threads are coming together on every coil of the great spiral, swordsman. The yours has brought you to the trapped world, to the depth of perdition but back to the living. Then here.'

Aphedron stopped and hugged Scalaria by the shoulders. 'So what the heck has brought you here then, knife-ear?'

Ulchabhan shook his head. 'Being a stranger is an art by itself. Our paths seem obscure to your kind but there are things that are easier for you. Where the threads are severed. My ancestors followed the sacred cycle of rebirth, some ancient souls found eternal peace within the sacred walls of the Webway but in present times my kin is devoid of such mercy.'

His unexpected streams of consciousness sounded uncanny but I held my breath trying to find clues in the lengthy ruminations.

'Lucky Beggar told me, most souls used to depart the world for parts unknown to him,' said Scalaria. 'But when your ancestors were helping to build the Webway, powerful seers volunteered to stay between the realms to keep the paths safe and alive. So will their watch last until the end of days.'

The Autarch nodded. 'Get upstairs to join my vigil, seer maiden.'

Aphedron smirked but Scalaria got up on her tiptoes and reached out to cover his mouth with her hand. They sat down on the platform next to me, and Scalaria sprawled on the floor, her head on Aphedron's knee.

'The Cosmic Serpent you talked about had something to do with the Webway, both in the Immaterium and the material realm,' she told Ulchabhan. 'Lucky Beggar tells so many tales in riddles and hints.'

'And with the afterlife,' said Ulchabhan. 'Something overlooked by most of the clansmen but which means more than all their endless arguments and clashes.'

Aphedron pulled a mocking grimace. 'That was why they kicked you out, you fun-killer?'

Ulchabhan's aura remained undisturbed. 'The Harlequins don't think so, and they understand what fun means better than anyone in this sour galaxy. I've walked along with rangers and pathfinders who revere Hoec the Wanderer, one of the old gods who was one with the Webway and showed the way to living strangers and souls alike.'

'Like most of the Old Ones, he's got to the Maw of Lust.'

Ulchabhan stroked his spirit stone. 'Not forever. She-Who-Thirsts you used to adore cannot hold them within forever.'

'You recalled the White Hawk's rune?' I whispered, and a gust of cold ran through Ulchabhan's aura.

'He wasn't one of us. He dared to chant about what the bravest cannot say out loud. The biggest of fears, the greatest of hopes.' He crossed his arms and strode to the ladder in a hurry that didn't match his earlier stolidity.

Scalaria tapped me on the shoulder. 'Volentia, hope you won't think it's too impolite…'

I shrugged my shoulders, thoughts still messed up after the talk. She pulled a begging face. 'Just half an hour, for astropath litanies. Fluffster insists on Aphedron honing his Epistolary skills.'

'I'm always open to all things new and exciting, sweetling,' Aphedron smoothed her hair and smiled at me. 'We won't keep you waiting for long. Chambers three and eight are just as awesome for meditating.'

I hobbled down. Lessons or whatever fancied by Aphedron's restless mind, there were things of bigger importance. My brain worked slower than usually, weakened by the latest shock but I suppressed the temptation to try using the shard again. Ynnead was connected with rebirth, Eldrad Ulthran had said, and the rune I had seen on the Hawk's breastplate saved Prince Fiachra from the Dark Apostle's deadly curse. Ulchabhan's quest seemed to be of even better use for me than the hunt for the Mockingbird. Too Radical, on the brink of heresy but too far from populated space to get noticed.

As I roamed further through the endless enfilade of transparent chambers, my vertigo was getting stronger despite the protective charms of the place. I stopped by a rune-marked wall watching rubbish pieces floating by the ship. As if we were passing through a field of shipwreck debris. Minutes passed by but the Fortress couldn't leave the field behind. Even bigger pieces started bumping into the crystal walls from the outside. For a second all runes blinked. I jumped back instinctively.

My vox came alive. 'Volentia, have you seen our psykers? They're needed in the navigation center. Their presence is hidden so even the Sea Lion cannot track them,' said Fluffster.

I scratched my head. 'I thought you had sent them to the gallery. Well, looks like I have to disturb them.'

More pieces of strange rubbish were hitting the walls but I ran back to the pavilion. Both Aphedron and Scalaria had turned off their vox and obscured their auras which was easy in the warded quarters. Spheres of flame had flown to the entrance and were now floating in the doorway level with my head. I drove them aside with my Will and walked up to the now shaded central platform. A fiery sphere followed me and stopped hovering above.

A magenta silken stocking hung from the edge of the platform where Aphedron and Scalaria, huddled together, turned their heads to me, startled by a nearby psyker aura. Heavy steps of an armoured warrior echoed in the opposite passage. Scalaria squealed and pulled her skirts down her bared legs but Aphedron only smirked.

My cheeks felt hot. 'Sorry, folks. There'll be better time for astropathic practice. Some shit has happened in the center.'

Aphedron winked. 'Everyone will have great opportunities for learning new skills one day, dear.'

Imudon, clad in his full suit, his helmet attached to his belt, came up to me and crossed his arms. 'We're messed up, Pansexualis. Get dressed right now, you dirty old stallion.'

Scalaria jumped up buttoning the cleavage of her dress and leaned on Aphedron's arm. I turned aside as they hurried down adjusting their garbs.

'Let's go.' Imudon put his hand on my shoulder. 'Every psyker will be needed there.'

I looked after the giggling pair who ran out of the room. The stocking was left on the platform, buttons from Aphedron's shirt lay on the stairway steps. My mind in an even worse mess, I recalled the talk with Leptonyx about what many Inquisitors have to sacrifice for their job. There were people like the Corydoras couple but they had been raised by usual families and had come to the profession already grown up.

'Well, some people prefer to indulge in their most basic desires even while the fate of the universe is being decided right around them.' said Imudon, his hand still there.

I sighed and squinted at him. His features softened for a second at a half-smile but then he gave me a light nudge and walked towards the stairway. A fiery sphere lit red for a second right over his head, and a dramatic flashback flickered in my mind leaving a bout of vertigo behind. A giant lit by warp-flame torches stares at me in the sinister nave of the Chaos shrine. My fingers bump into the red ceramite. I used to recall his name and countenance so often it had been close to obsession. His redemption had brought him down to earth in some way the enemy I had feared and loathed was also gone after the skirmish before the altars. The grumpy man who had lost his Dark Apostle mask was staunchly loyal in his service to the Emperor's cause despite his seeming reluctance.

When we got into a shuttle already waiting at the sigil-inscribed gate of the seer chambers, I patted his gauntlet. He shook my hand back. Blood pounding in my head, I sat down and took my carapace and weapons hung over the seat by Cypher's retainers. On the back seats, Scalaria sprawled in Aphedron's lap, their intertwined auras radiating with pleasure. Next to them, the Sea Lion was tapping his fingers on the shuttle wall.

'Ready to bet you two will summon a Keeper of Secrets aboard once we're outta here,' he finally grumbled.

'The little witch is naughtier than the machine lass you told me about in the city,' said the Stray Cat who was sitting opposite them with a can of beer in his hand.

Scalaria pouted her lips. 'Machine adepts are all cold iron down there, aren't they, honey?' She put both hands on Aphedron's cheeks. I turned away at a loud smack of a deep kiss.

A hail of void rubbish came banging on the outer walls once we crossed the border area as if a storm came down on the ship. A hostile presence made the psykers' auras fade. My throat and guts spasmed at the familiar stench that filled the shuttle in moments. The Stray Cat gave out a roar and gripped his bolter.

Musk. Musk and ambergris.

The Shadow, still distant and weak, had still got so near it was hard to concentrate. When we ran out to the navigation pavilion, pieces of rubbish had piled on the transparent vault, stirring by itselves in the light of crystals. Sharp splinters of copper and glass, jasper and porphyry had left cracks and scratches on the wall that could withstand warp storms, if old tales were to believe. A glass splinter as large as a space marine was stuck to the wall, dirty smoke billowing and twisting inside like a horrendous beast. A grotesquely magnified copy of Ruber Pimenta's treasure. Aphedron stared at it with his fists clenched.

'The shards of Torquetum, Fluffster called them on the planet of the Casbah,' I said. 'Heralds of the… big cursed ship.'

Fluffster looked out of the pavilion through the central portal at the sound of his name. 'What sad irony, isn't it? Three madmen had to sacrifice the crew and their own souls just to find it while we're about to encounter it against our will.'

'The more you pursue the goal, the further it evades,' Ulchabhan answered from the inside.

Waves of the musk smell were rolling through the hall with every jolt. Fluffster waved his paw. 'Here, quicker. Take the seats around the throne.'

Floating lamps were slowly orbiting the navigation throne where Cypher and Lucky Beggar were fixing already activated arcane machinery connected to the throne dais. The bottom part of the dais had been folded out to form smaller stalls linked with the throne machinery with both cords of golden living metal and invisible strings of psychic energy.

'Sadly, many of the machines haven't survived the millennia after the War.' Fluffster sighed drawing rows of runes on a psychoactive screen with his paw.

'Omegon', arms crossed on his chest, watched the scene with the mismatched lenses of his helmet. The Stray Cat gave him a nudge as he passed by.

'Primarchs are all prodigies in tech, aren't they? You used to surprise us with excessive knowledge of xenotech then.'

'Omegon' squinted at Cypher. 'I observe the repairs to give advice when they get stuck.'

'The Weasel would be curious.' I recalled the ghost who hadn't shown up since we had boarded the Blackstone Fortress.

Lucky Beggar turned to us. 'The power who orchestrated his pitiful ascension isn't welcome within these walls despite its ardent desire to get here through its minions.'

I put my hand on my breastplate. 'That has been harsh.'

He giggled. 'Bad luck of one day turns into good luck on the other. A damnation for one soul into salvation for another. Whom to blame but Lady Luck?'

The Sea Lion had already taken the central stall under the main navigation throne. A cloud of glowing mist was spinning around him as he stared into the warp with closed eyes.

'The Shadow is almost over us,' he whispered through his half-slumber. 'Soon it will overtake us in realspace, not in the warp as we feared.'

'Woven by mortal hands millenia before the old War, two serpents, two sister-ships were sailing betwixt the Materium and the Immaterium to connect them with a string made of silver. The Covenant prescribed so, and everyone rejoiced. It was because the sapient mortals, the first ones and the very last ones, could finally walk the pathways in a safe manner. The ultimate gift for those bold talented children,' said Lucky Beggar.

Scalaria smiled. 'Tell us more, sir. Even the Aeldari seem to have lost these memories.'

'When the storm has settled, seer. But some with memories have endured.'

She ran up the dais and climbed on the throne. Her bright aura flashed like a firestorm when the combined might of the ship's psychic circuit flooded her mind. The machinery came alive sparkling with hundreds of seer crystals.

'So to the warp at last, if the Fortress doesn't fall apart on the way,' said Fluffster.

Lucky Beggar shook his head. 'We'll hope for good luck.'

'For the Emperor's help,' Aphedron said firmly sitting down next to the Sea Lion.

'We need every psyker on board for a jump,' said Cypher. 'Or else we won't break free from the Shadow's attraction.'

Lucky Beggar clenched his golden fist. 'The maw that cannot be sated, the abyss that cannot be filled. The bottomless pit, Many-Dissolved-in-One.'

Even Ulchabhan didn't argue. He chose a stall on the other side of the dais away from us. I sat down next to Aphedron and let the current take me away. First there was nothing but formless shimmering haze but then the joint voices of the crew called out to me through the radiance. The smell of musk faded for a few moments but as soon as I answered the call, a tremendous clash shook me. Far away in the material realm, the shard inside the pouch was trying to break free, its cold flamelet burning my soul as I reached out with the psychic choir.

An endless sultry void was coming down upon us, faster than the ship trying to evade into the Ocean of Souls. Tainted matter and energy fused together, the huge Scarlet Serpent's hull cast a shadow unspeakably bigger. A Shadow large enough to extinguish a million blazing suns. To let uncounted souls fade away within its pitch dark. It beckoned so we sunk into its hot womb, its primal depth, gave ourselves in to its burning lust. Our choir strained every nerve while the Shadow was dragging the ship away into the murk.

Smoke oozed through the wall of haze and whirled around, filling my lungs with choking musk reek. Hisses and howls mixed with the anxious chant of the ship's soul, then a voice spoke from the overwhelming darkness.

'Come to me, sweet girl! Come to me!'

Angel's pale face suddenly appeared from the smoke, his eyes ablaze with scarlet fire. I recoiled as he reached for me with both hands. Some episode from a distant past I tried to recall but couldn't. A youth's innocent countenance had turned into a grown man's, his full lips crooked in a lustful smile revealing bloodied fangs.

'Your hidden hunger draws you closer to the Great Maw that eats longing souls so they become one in the welcoming depth,' he called louder. 'Your hidden hunger. Your slumbering desire. Your suppressed wrath. Let me drink your soul, and you will drink from the cup of my lust, my fire, my poison. That is what you have been craving for.'

Scarlet wings unfurled behind his bared shoulders. Dull pain in the midriff got worse, my heart leapt pounding. The image of two psyker auras united in pleasure flashed in my mind, and aching warmth stirred in the pit of my stomach. A wing curled around my shoulders and pulled me close to the being's radiating heat. It's not Angel, I told myself. It had already tried to devour me.

Stunned, only then I noticed I had no armour on. Stark naked in the simmering smoke.

Hot fingers stroked my thigh. 'Give in to my desire. My murder. My fornication,' the voice hissed over my ear.

'Good Emperor,' I whispered.

Before I could recite any litany struggling with haze, the being's other hand covered my mouth and nose. I tried to break free, back to the choir, back to realspace, but my breath stopped, my voice died in my throat.

'A mark, a mark I won't need. But here my will is stronger.' The being touched my midriff, then its fingers crawled down. 'Stay in my embrace for just a while. Let me pull more souls to the swarm.'

The being's face level with mine, it stared at me with hungry craving that didn't fit Angel I had known. It's not a man. Not a human at all, with all the striking beauty. Imudon's stern face came to my mind instead all of a sudden. Back. Back.

Heat turned to burning fire. A giant likeness of a sundew leaf was wrapped around me where an angelic wing had been. Claws of the caressing hand ripped at my belly.

'Caught… Caught… Within the Shadow…'

Repeating soundless litanies, I kicked and struggled with all remaining strength. With a desperate effort I tore the hand from my face and gasped for air. The choir's light broke through the smoke.

'Volentia!' Distant voices reached me. 'Are you fine?' Aphedron. Scalaria. Friends.

I pulled behind the choir grasping at its radiance overcoming the murk. The carnivorous being's grip loosened. A wave of psychic energy rolled over me carrying the last scraps of darkness away. The rocking calmed down. The Blackstone Fortress was sailing through the waves of the warp.


	48. Episode 6 Chapter 5

Once the taut cord of the choir link broke, the shining waves that swirled around me rushed back. The contours of the bridge appeared before me. Panting, I stretched my arms and legs and sat back to have a respite. Ulchabhan walked past me on shaky feet.

'I thought She-Who-Thirsts is the worst that can be encountered away from Saim-Hann,' he grunted to Cypher and Lucky Beggar. 'But this thing is hunger and carnality embodied.'

'Earlier, I'd have never been glad to enter the warp at last,' I said.

'The Fortress can provide enough safety against lesser horrors to be encountered here,' said Lucky Beggar. His smile had faded, he looked quite intimidated as warp draught was leaking in through the breaches in the defensive field of the ship. Still the arcane circuit stifled the outside whispers.

I looked down so as not to stare at the obnoxious whirlpools roiling beyond the transparent walls. The buzz awakened by the entity's touch still didn't go away, the pit of my stomach ached despite my efforts to calm down. I clasped my hands together and held my breath for a few seconds.

Scalaria remained on the throne even when the other psykers had left their seats. Her face motionless and placid, she had become one with the ship's soul to let us drift through the warp to our distant goal.

'She's not a navigator,' Aphedron said to Lucky Beggar. 'Are you gonna keep her here forever?'

'There were no special navigators among those who built it, warrior. When she gets tired, there is the Lion's seer son to take her place for a while.' Lucky Beggar pointed at the Sea Lion.

'We're lucky the abomination didn't follow us to the warp,' said Imudon.

'Without a helmsman, it has little will of its own,' said Lucky Beggar. 'Like a predator beast, it charges against any prey it encounters but goes away for its whim whenever the prey escapes. One day, it might chase it, on the other, it continues its own way.'

I recalled what I had heard in the marketplace. 'It used to have captains. The traders mentioned the Consort of the Void.'

'Shut up. Shut up everyone,' a muffled growl came from behind.

Aphedron smirked. 'Flashbacks, buddy?'

I got up to take a look. The Stray Cat pressed himself to a column, his fists clenched. His aura was all bitter anguish and badly hidden fear.

'Don't you all stare at me, bastards,' he wheezed out. 'The bloody smell of musk will pester me until the end of my bloody life.'

'If I ever walked to the center of the Casbah, I could have got a wondrous lifelong employment in the crew of this flesh bucket,' said Aphedron.

The Stray Cat jumped forward. Aphedron parried his blow with a chuckle. Before the next one, Cypher was already standing between them.

'You two idiots. There are daemons aplenty all around, and we don't have a Gellar Field.'

Lucky Beggar frowned. 'In the best days of the Fortress, no Gellar Field could match this beautiful defence aura.'

'In the best days,' said Cypher and turned to the us. 'The gathering is over. Lord Crinitus and Scalaria will stay but you all return to the protected chambers.'

In the shuttle I sat in silence next to Imudon. In silence like everyone. After we had eluded the menace and adrenaline had worn off, weakness pressed down on me. I squinted at Imudon's face. A memory from the real world that had unexpectedly helped me to break free of the Shadow's grasp. He nodded lightly. When he disembarked with the other marines to have their daily training session, I still felt too worn to join them. Only within the enchantment-woven shelter I could forget about the obnoxious whispers for a while. To sleep without dreams.

Scalaria and the Sea Lion taking turns in the navigation pavilion, the Fortress followed the set course towards Caorthann, the Voice of the Emperor still docked to one of the star rays. Though damaged, its safety network of dampening blackstone kept the warp around relatively stable, and the ship sailed on the warp tides without delay. The sickness and unrest brought by the Serpent ceded after a few bland standard days in the protected area. I missed company, and Imudon most of all. They came to see me for an hour daily but I had to spend these days in sleep and prayer to let the damage heal. As the psychic circuit let me glimpse at the others' auras, I could sense Imudon's wistful weariness, the passion that drew Aphedron and Scalaria together, the Stray Cat's anguish.

When Fluffster finally allowed me to get out, I was excited to join the crew in the center after the forced idleness. Whistling eerie tunes, Lucky Beggar was loitering between crystal 'cogitators' as if without purpose, tapping on the panels here and there. Cypher and Fluffster watched the fluent pattern of his moves with awed attention. Hesitant to ask direct questions, I stayed behind just observing our sages. They spoke in the Aeldari tongue with Ulchabhan who didn't approach the seer machinery but examined the constructs with his warp-sight.

'Isn't it funny?' said Lucky Beggar when he noticed me looking at his strolls. 'There was a great King who told the jester to steal a bark, the fanciest bark ever made. If you were a King of such might, whom would you give the stolen treasure?'

I scratched the back of my head. 'My chosen heir.'

'The King decided otherwise.' He winked and headed to the opposite wall.

He kept on telling cryptic tales as we were approaching the system of Caorthann. Scalaria, already used to his style of speech, demanded more and more, especially captivated by the stories of the Old Ones who had walked among mortal peoples once until the Fall.

'The Hunter's power,' he spoke perched on the upper steps of the dais, 'was split long before the Warrior's, out of his own good will. The Aeldari have got soft and weak during the millennia of their Empire, unable to survive on all but thoroughly cultivated lush planets. Not long before the Great Enemy was born, a few clans had sought to leave the depraved cities as their prophetic visions had warned them of the coming Fall. The Hunter Father's gift was a part of his essence for every clan so they could settle down on wild worlds. He watches over them from the green and shelters departed souls in his embrace so that one day they would pass beyond the grip of the Dark Prince.'

Lucky Beggar nodded to Ulchabhan who was listening to him with tense attention. When Scalaria raised her hand, ready to blurt out awed questions, Lucky Beggar put his finger to his lips. 'Tomorrow by your time you will see it with your own mind-sight. The image is worth a thousand words.'

A crowd of battle-clad warriors led by dragon riders had already gathered on the vast grassland of Caorthann when our shuttles had landed between the old forest and the hills. Cypher had ordered Scalaria to send a secret message to the surface as the Blackstone Fortress had left the warp right over the planet. Covered in bright greenery, Caorthann orbited a yellow star not unlike Sol or the yellow dwarf of my homeworld.

Tall conifers with dark branches towered over thick golden crowns of trees and bushes that seemed to glow in sunset light. Berries of vivid red bestrewed the conifer boughs, radiated like embers among fretted leaves underneath. A haze of sparkling energy floated over the forest edge as if streaming out of its light-filled heart. I closed my eyes, drowning in the thick smell of moss and grass, of never-ending life almost lost on neat civilized worlds and forgotten on ruined forges and by dwellers of void stations.

Five chieftains led their dragons out of the army ranks. Their leaf-coloured armour decorated with totemic emblems and feathers, their helmets adorned with woven branches of copper and gold, their cloaks sewn from hundreds of brocade leaves, they themselves were one with the old woods. The chieftain in a crown of red gold boughs spoke first.

His voice rang in my ears, interpreted by Fluffster's device. 'The Oracle of the Twin Moons has warned us of your arrival, guests from the stars. Many roads pass through Caorthann, many of races young and old come to heed to the Hunter's voice. Bound he may be in the Womb of Destruction, our folk believes he is not dead but watching over the stray children.'

'You have met us with armed power of the strongest clans, lord,' said Cypher. 'Do enemies threaten the Old Wood often now?'

'These are the rites of the Hunter kept since we first settled here. Children of younger races have no reverence for the old gods and their legacy. They demand answers without courtesy, they seek the Tree's power to sate their greed we despise.'

Cypher nodded. Before he spoke, no one, even Fluffster or Aphedron, didn't dare to say a word. 'We have come in the traces of a warrior lord who grew under the Hunter's gaze, in the light of his fire. If we are lucky, we will meet him.'

'The Ice Wolf left us three turns of the moons ago, stranger,' said the chieftain. 'Ask the Oracle for more when the moons are high above the Tree.'

A single sunlit path was winding into the depths of the forest under the golden canopy of leaves. Sentinel conifers stood on both sides over the branches of smaller trees that weaved together in arches above our heads. A dozen riders ahead, the chieftains behind us with their retinues, we rode past thicket shadows and shining glades until the light turned red at sunset. Lucky Beggar had been there while we were talking, almost merging with the golden leaves but vanished once we had taken our seats in the shuttle.

Darkness was coming down upon the forest, chilly violet twilight turning into inky darkness. Conifer boughs joined above, only crystalline torches in the hands of Dragon riders showing us the way through the mossy corridor. Cypher had our shuttle lights turned off by the chieftain's word. Then the torches went down. A spark of silver flickered in the distant end of the path. Walls of trees and bushes parted at the edge of a vast glade.

Surrounded by a circle of glowing crystalline trees, a gigantic trunk as wide as a temple towered in the center. I had to throw back my head to see its spreading crown a hundred meters above. Two pillars of moonlight, one silvery and one golden, fell on the thick grass through the rustling leaves. Where they crossed before the tree, there was a tall rift in the trunk covered in briar climbing up the bark. A thin stream of scented smoke was wafting out of the rift, and pearl-coloured roses scattered over the mesh of briar fluttered as the smoke curled around them. A rune was carved over the rift, coloured in red ochre.

A chant of joint auras was flowing through the glade, a clearer voice coming from every crystal tree of the circle. As I looked at them again, I noticed crystallized Aeldari shapes fused with the trees, branches growing out of their shoulders and chests, their faces peaceful.

'Like on craftworlds, Caorthann has its crystalline choir as well, the souls of past Oracles resting with the World Spirit,' Fluffster whispered but the chieftain put his finger to his lips.

Ulchabhan walked forward, his mind-gaze slipping over the place.

'You shall wait a bit, strangers. Another group of guests have arrived to seek counsel from the Hunter Father,' said the chieftain.

Finally, small xenos cloaked in ragged hooded robes appeared from the rift. A familiar aura startled me. The Hrud.

'They feel like those Hrud we met on Cyprinus,' I said into Fluffster's ear.

'Because these are right them, Volentia.'

One of the Hrud pulled back the hood, and moonlight shone in his large round eyes. 'That's me, Dawnspark,' he squeaked. 'Our paths have crossed in the Green Lord's sanctuary, and now we know the way.'

Cypher bowed his head. 'A service for a service, leader. Your path, my ship.' He leaned over to Dawnspark's head and whispered something my interpreter device couldn't catch. Dawnspark nodded.

The chieftain raised his hand. 'Do not make the Oracle wait, stranger.'

A thin Eldar woman in leaf-embroidered long robes stepped out of the rift. What I first mistook for ornate pauldrons and a ceremonial crown turned out to be thin branches of amber-hued crystal growing out of her body. Her seer's aura touched the ours. Scalaria shook her head and pulled Aphedron towards the tree. Leaves rustled in the wind, and Lucky Beggar's golden shape appeared from behind the trunk, his living metal glimmering under the moons.

'Come in.' The Oracle opened up her arms, standing in the twin moonlight. 'Let the Hunter's eyes gaze upon you in his verdant sanctuary.'

A woody smell of burning fragrant resin filled the quiet chamber within the mighty Tree. Like in the War-Shrine of Iarmailt, a presence of a great power lingered within the dark carved walls yet not the battle-wrath of the Warrior but the calm might of wilderness.

'The Ice Wolf spent a whole night here alone, speaking to the Hunter, and I did not dare to interfere,' the Oracle said quietly. 'When he left, he took a single rose from the briar. Forefathers of our forefathers said these roses are a memory from long before the War. Mother Isha planted one of her roses on our race's lost homeworld when the realms of gods and men had got separated. The saplings did not have the wondrous power of heavenly flowers but they were an eternal reminder of life's power.'

As she stood by the doorway, we entered one by one. The hushed Stray Cat, probably haunted by the memory of his unsuccessful robbery, came in last with his eyes down.

The statue of Kurnous the Hunter stood at the back wall in a half-circle of crudely crafted lamps of clay and bone. While Khaine's shape had been wrought in copper, Kurnous was a giant of warm-coloured wood. Leaves of green gold were growing over his simple armour, weaving around a tall spear in his hand that had a long blooming branch instead of a shaft. A lustrous helmet topped with gilded deer horns covered his head, runes carved on the visor. Green seer crystals in the eye slits gave out a subtle glow. He sees us, a sudden thought echoed with cold in my midriff. Against my will I covered the damn pouch with both hands. I should have left it on board.

Hard fingers squeezed my shoulder. Fear struck me, and I froze, unable to breathe.

'Get out, daughter of filth, get out!' the Oracle hissed into my ear and tugged me to the exit. 'The Forest's wrath will kill you if you ever try to unleash the Enemy's power here. The Hunter Father does not wish your taint in his sanctuary.'

First Imudon and Aphedron put their hands on their weapons but as she spoke, they both sighed and shook their heads. Fluffster put his paw on my other shoulder.

'I hoped you would not risk our safety. But it's still better if you stay out while we finish the rites.'

The shard inside the pouch was trembling, calling me to touch it. I lingered, the burning desire for the hidden power awakened again. The Oracle's fingers loosened. A deafening voice clamoured like a horn of doom, and the lamps flickered for a second.

'BEGONE, GAOLER. BEGONE!'

I darted out as if the fabled Wild Hunt itself was chasing me. Shaking in terror, I undid the pouch clasp and tossed it down to the grass. The chieftains stared at me without a word, Dawnspark exchanged a few squeaks with his companions.

'Just a bad surprise,' I said with a frown. 'Well, not too much of a surprise but still bad.'

Dawnspark and the other Hrud huddled together next to the briar wall, pearly petals falling slowly on their robes. Awed, they stared at the full moons shining over the Tree.

'The path leads to the sun and moon for our people,' Dawnspark whispered. 'Far away to the halls of memories and dreams. Where our past forgotten even by the Elders lies waiting.'

I sat down next to him. 'What is the man called Cypher looking for? His own past?'

'His kin he thought lost or dead. The Lingering One remembers. He exists to remember.'

'You headed here after you had left Cyprinus?'

'We delivered the man to Lord Kryptopterus' outpost. They knew the way here.'

I looked aside crumpling the end of my scarf in both hands. 'There are mysteries for me to see. Scalaria the astropath first told me about the tower of memories when we met in the blackstone quarry of Auriglobus. If I search well enough, I'll get right to the day I got the mark to see as many clues as possible. Your Lingering One must know,' I lowered my voice against my will, 'who the gaoler is.'

Dawnspark nodded. 'The past is the key to the future, our Elders would say. Visions of ancient times or recent years, they show us the way through the mist of unknowing. Roots. Old roots of a great tree.' He clung to the bark watching boughs sway gently in the wind above us.

The moons declined until their mixed light was lost in the dark crowns of the conifers. The chieftains were silent as statues but their minds were joined in a voiceless conversation. Puffs of thin smoke vanished. The Great Tree rustled from the top to the lowermost branches and the blooming briars. I sensed a disturbance in the shining circuit that bound the crystallized choir together. Dawnspark chirped a quick phrase to the other Hrud.

Talking in whispers to Cypher and Fluffster, the Oracle walked out. Leaves on her branches tinkled in the rhythm of her steps. As her glance fell upon me, her calm face froze. Fluffster leaned over to her ear and whispered something back. She shook her head.

'Get up,' Fluffster patted my shoulder. 'The Wolf's trail is still fresh, and our nocturnal friends are heading to the same place.'

'Tell me who the…' I paused, fearing the Hunter's wrath to smite me if I named the horrid entity. 'The… prison warder is.'

'I advise you not to ask this here, before the visage of the Old One. When time comes…'

'Fluffster, when time comes, this monster will already have finished us.'

Cypher stared at me. 'Where have you heard this word at all?'

'One old cryptek cursed this abomination when he sensed the mark.' I decided to omit the disturbing details. 'Now, the Hunter Lord did really mind its presence.'

'Let's return to the Fortress then.'

Awed and quiet, Ulchabhan stroked the bark before going away from the Tree. He walked along the circle of seers, reaching out as if to touch the crystal faces. Only when Cypher bade farewell to the chieftains, Ulchabhan quickly ran his fingers across the nearby seer's boughs, his mind shone bright within the river of psychic light.

Scalaria stopped before me, a smile of excitement on her lips. 'It's a shame they didn't let you stay, Volentia. The Old One's statue is marvelous in realspace, I saw through Aphedron's eyes, but the image seen by the psyker-sight is truly majestic. The life-force of the wilderness, the same fatherly strength as in my father and grandfathers. I'll show you what remained in my mind. The same wonder as the tower of dreams.'

'The Nocturnal Warriors say we're going there,' I said.

She clapped her hands. 'Wow, wow! After seeing it for thousands of times… Going there for real, not in visions only!' She gave Aphedron a nudge. 'You'll love it, sweetheart. There's old memories and ancient stories galore to show you.'

Walking in the end of the line, I lingered on the edge of the glade. Leaves of the Great Tree were scattered around the crystal seers. I leaned over to pick up one of golden yellow with red veins. The Oracle pursed her lips but nodded when I looked at her. We took our seats in the shuttle, Lucky Beggar already there, his puzzling smile on his golden face again. Dawnspark let in the Hrud, and the xenos hid in the darker corners chirping endlessly. I stuffed the leaf in my pocket but my fingers touched something cold and sharp. A discharge of psychic energy made me jump up on my seat.

Imudon took the thing from my hand and frowned. The reddish glint was smouldering inside the damn shard.

'Put it back if it refuses to leave you alone,' he grumbled.

I sighed. 'If I knew that I wouldn't have thrown away the pouch.'

'I picked it up while you were talking.'

The visit to the alien forest, though brief, breathed new life into my weary soul. I spent hours on the bridge with my knitting or tech-exercises, trying to catch every word of Lucky Beggar's tales. First I hoped to coax him into giving a few clues for my question but he avoided the topic with his usual smile. Every day I trained with my crew, assembled more complicated circuits, even dared to venture into the seer chambers to take a peek at the warp currents.

To my surprise, the tides flowed almost calm there, no daemons of Chaos gods lurking around. From time to time, warp krakens and whales passed by, their bodies as big as the Fortress itself. Small spheres of glossy black, anthracite and silver floated in flocks by the walls of the ship, clouds of mist shifting and changing shapes around them. One bumped into the crystal wall as I stared at it. Its subtle whisper joined the voices of the ship. A single word sounded within my mind.

'Linger.'


	49. Episode 6 Chapter 6

Flights of spheres moved along with the Blackstone Fortress, and a slow warp current carried us forth like a fishing boat of my lost homeworld heading to the bay with an escort of cormorans. Strange colours gave way to misty nacre. Soft silvery light was coming from behind a wall of aether fog right ahead. More spheres slipped in and out through the fog, their only enigmatic word repeated in hundreds of whispering voices.

When I reached the bridge, the first I heard was the excited screeching of the Hrud. Led by Dawnspark, they had climbed up to the vault of the central pavilion. The spheres had gathered on the other side, rocking to the sounds of the aliens' eerie chant.

Wannabe-Omegon who had been hiding in the ship's bowels for so long we had almost forgotten about his very existence was sitting in the corner, fresh cracks on his oversized pauldrons. He had been the only one to avoid visiting the Exodite world, probably afraid for his secrets before the Seers.

Ulchabhan, his arms crossed, watched the smooth movements of the sphere, his aura showing astonished curiosity, so rare for his life-worn people. The Fortress, adrift in calmed aether, was getting closer to the fog. Scalaria got up from the navigation throne and stretched.

'The place beyond is pulling us like a magnet,' she said. 'So I can have a rest. Just can't wait to enter the tower.'

'Are these… the Umbrae?' I finally managed to remember the drawing of a similar floating sphere in the xenology manual.

'They can be dangerous but in other places,' said Fluffster who was recording the flight with his dataslate. 'We could only have reached the place in a mighty ship like this. Many a hapless trader or even Inquisitor perished in the troubled tides trying to find a safe passage to this hidden place. But the Blackstone Fortresses were designed to sail through the worst of storms.'

The dense fog enveloped the ship. White glow was still oozing through, and we were sailing through a sea of warm scattered light. Then the fog parted. Radiance flooded the pavilion.

Amid a shining nowhere, arches upon arches, windows upon windows, the biggest building I had ever seen grew out of bottomless depths beneath. The spectral tower's summit was lost in aether clouds hundreds of floors above us. Fleeting shapes flickered in lit windows, new whispering voices weaved into the chant of the ship's choir. One of larger windows opened, and a torrent of light burst out. It weaved into a transparent bridge over the abyss. The other end of the bridge was unfurling towards us until it set against one of the star rays.

Cypher nodded. 'The lord of the tower has granted his consent. Board the shuttles but keep in mind you shall not forget your prudence while seeking for answers in his chambers.'

Cypher had the shuttles parked before the lock-gate in the end of the ray. Only there I saw Fluffster checking the engines but he only waved his paw and leaned over his dataslate again when I greeted him.

'Are we supposed… to just walk out into the warp?' I paused before the gate ready to open.

'Here, it's mostly safe like in the old millennia,' said Cypher. 'The Umbrae guards will sense any danger before it can do us harm. Just step out and don't be afraid.'

A delicate aether breeze blew in, bringing strange smells of so long ago I barely recalled them. Sea salt, orange groves, mixed scents of incense and freshly baked bread in the convent halls. The bridge was but a stripe of flowing light under our feet. I closed my eyes and made a step. It felt like a clifftop footpath over the edge of a precipice. With my eyes still shut, I put my hand into the belt pouch. The shard had been left on board but I was sure it followed me like before. As always, my fingers slipped across its sharp angle but its psychic echo died out at once in the surrounding calm.

Imudon strode towards the tower with his hand on the hilt of his bolter. Stricken by the distress of his aura, I touched his gauntlet. 'The damn woods,' he grunted. 'Even the smell of leaves cannot drown out the reek of rotting blood.'

Aphedron and the Stray Cat had calmed down as they walked towards the shining gate, deep in their remembrances. The tower's radiance enveloped us all.

The salty wind of the old town that was no more. Sunlight filling the summer garden of a house burnt down long ago. Booze fumes and a choir of rowdy voices in an underhive bar. The warmth of a night in the owl. The taste of redcurrants in the peaceful countryside. The smell of earth, rain and bone-white roses of an alien world.

Then a wistful voice spoke within my mind through the whirlwind of memories that came down upon me. The voice I had heard in my dreams in the blackstone quarry of Auriglobus. 'THE LANDFILL OF OBSOLETE IDEAS AND CAST-OFF IMAGES FORGOTTEN BUT STILL LINGERING.'

Cypher stopped in the stream of light pouring out of the gate. 'The ways of my kinsmen all lead to your abode where you treasure dreams of yore, Keeper of memories. Let us learn what we should know in the end of days. Nothing has evaded the halls of your mind.' The Hrud gave out a simultaneous lengthy squeak.

Another cryptic phrase rustled. 'THE MASTERY OF BEING REDUNDANT. THE ART OF BEING A STRANGER.'

Uncounted paths unfurled past the gateway, up and down galleries and stairways. I grabbed the hem of Cypher's robe as he was about to step through a door. 'Lord, shall we follow you?'

'You have your questions to find answers,' he said without looking back. 'Go your own way, and the tower shows you what you should know.'

I walked past wannabe-Omegon who froze up on a crossroads pondering with his hands clasped on his chest. Imudon was nowhere to be seen. Spectral cities and battlefields flickered in shifting doorways, bits of phrases in human and alien tongues reached my ears. Keeping in mind the same painful question, I ran through a long arched gallery. Doors clapped on both sides but the shining path ran further. I followed the psychic trail down a spiral stairway.

In the middle I stopped to have a rest in a stairwell. A hot wind that reeked of metal and slag hit me in the face, and it tasted like blood in my mouth. A black sun was like a hole in the pale skies of Medrengard over my head. Through the cackling of the Iron Seer another voice called from the depths of a darkened fortress below.

'In the darkest of abysses… He sees me. He sees you.'

With a shriek I rushed down on my eagle wings. 'Do not come out through a closed door!' the Iron Seer cried out but I was far away. Steps were flashing past me until I found myself back in my body in the center of a vast chamber with dozens of doors of varying shapes and sizes but none of them was closed.

My midriff started aching when I stepped towards the closest door. I took a deep breath. The spring sea was rolling over white cliffs of the bay. First leaves had burst out on trees in the convent garden but the bright sky showed through the still bare branches. I hid both hands in the pockets of my dress. Inquisition? Mark? A strange dream to tell the girls after breakfast. Now I should hurry down to the refectory. If I finish the breakfast quickly, I'll manage to write down the High Gothic exercises from yesterday until the first lesson.

'IT IS GONE, INQUISITOR. LOST BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN.' I startled as the sad voice called out to me. Fog covered the tall window, and the convent hallway shattered and dissolved.

'Tell me how to find the key, the Lingering One,' I whispered.

'GO ON TO THE VERY BEGINNING OF THINGS.'

A familiar psychic waft came from another half-closed door. After a moment's doubt I pushed it.

White ceiling. Flowers on the wallpapers. A small room in a city district, the present me thought, but the one who stared up at the ceiling felt it to be big, even vast. Two faces leaned over me, a man and a woman smiling. Faces I didn't remember but so familiar at the same time. I reached for them, and a baby's cry echoed in my ears.

The small room faded away. Dazed, I leaned against the wall. The life before the orphanage I didn't remember. The beginning that may mean something. Or may not.

'Is it somehow connected to my present?' I sent a voiceless question to the Lingering One. 'Who were they?'

'PEOPLE. IS NOT THIS ENOUGH? PRESENT GROWS OUT OF PAST. APPEARS, FLICKERS, SEEMS.'

'Do you speak to the others like this too?'

'TO EVERY ONE WHO ASKS ME. EVEN WHEN YOU ARE FAR FROM MY PLACE. DELVING INTO THE DEPTHS OF YOUR GONE SUMMERS, PAST BATTLES, BURIED WOES.'

'You remember what I need to know.'

The voice rustled lower and lower. 'THE SMOKING FEATHERS OF DEAD SONGS AND FORGOTTEN TALES AND YESTERDAY'S SPRINGS.'

I stepped along the wall as slowly as I could, looking into every single door on my way. Nothing special caught my sight. Some episodes were relatively meaningless scenes of my past missions, some weren't familiar at all. An albino space marine in grey armour was answering a call on the bridge of his equally grey ship, a spectral crow cawing on his pauldron. A tall cloaked man entered a library hall that reminded me of the Inquisitorial Library of Uebotia. A warrior in a power suit of plain unpainted ceramite was arguing with a man of his stature clad in black armour.

Watching them discuss their matter in an unknown language, I somehow tripped on a step. Before I could grip the door, I was already rolling down a narrow stairway I hadn't noticed. I didn't feel pain as it all happened away from the material realm but the fall made me so dizzy everything whirled and danced before my eyes. I landed into something soft and burst out coughing at a sharp reek of smoke.

It was the freshest, brightest dawn I had seen but for settling clouds of smoke on the horizon. I lay in a heap of ash, flakes of soot were falling on me like black snow. There wasn't a living soul in the surrounding ruins. Charred remains of fortifications and piles of mauled metal towered all around. There was such overwhelming bitterness in the place that tears filled my eyes.

'A place of death,' I whispered.

'WHO PERISHED IN THE DECISIVE BATTLE, THE GENIAL DEFEAT?'

'Please. Please. Just tell me what it is, Keeper of memories.'

'THE DARKEST DAY THAT STILL LASTS. BUT IT IS GETTING TO ITS END. THEY WOKE UP IN THE MORNING, SANE AND SOUND, LIVED THEIR LIVES, CALLED THINGS BY THEIR NAMES…'

Contours of a gigantic crumbling palace appeared from the smoke. I gasped. It was the Imperial Palace of Holy Terra every Imperial citizen knew from the illustrations of pious books. A hundred centuries ago, on the morning after the Siege's bitter end. I curled up in the ash and hid my face in my hands.

I didn't know for how long I had lain in the place of sorrow when a new smell startled me. A distant note of musk and ambergris. It was probably just an echo, I thought, too weak to get up. Still the obnoxious smell didn't fade, only getting more sickening. I rubbed my eyes.

The desolation of Terra had gone. I found myself in a shaded corridor that led to another hallway with doors. The smell was wafting out of there. My legs got numb at once, vertigo struck me. For a second I was sure I saw a ring of smoke flutter out of a half-open door in the very end. Honestly unsure whether it really held keys to the past that did mean, I walked on my tiptoes to the doorway and peeped in.

Void. Void burst through a burnt breach in the place of a window. The only room devoid of memories. An image from the old dream flashed before my eyes. Rows of windows in the tower wall where one among them is blackened and blind. A stronger smell of musk enveloped me like a cloud. Right ahead amid the void a flock of Umbrae appeared whirling and flickering.

It is getting near. It is. A pit opened in my stomach, the floor rushed towards me. The very air was swishing out through the breach.

'JUST THE SHADOW'S SHADOW WHERE A BROKEN RUNAWAY MADE A FOOLISH STEP INTO THE ABYSS.'

My mouth opened and shut. Nothing but burning musk reek in my lungs, I turned to my back staring into the blackest black beyond. Sweat was rolling down my face as the ominous presence heated the room.

'Good Emperor,' I uttered with my lips only. 'Good Emperor.'

The musk stench ceded a bit but the presence still weighed down on me not letting me get up. I lay like that for some time, then mustered up my strength to whisper the first words of the Litany of Fear.

'GO AWAY FOR THE BOTTOMLESS MAW LURKS WAITING ON THE OTHER SIDE,' another powerful psychic voice called out all of a sudden.

'You're not the master of this place,' I sent back. Strangely, I didn't feel fear as the entity's aura was mighty and placid like the Lingering One's but I didn't sense anything even remotely familiar.

'BUT I AM A TREASURED GUEST IN THESE HALLS. YOUR COMPANIONS ALL LEAVE TO GET FAR AWAY BEFORE THE BEAST CATCHES THEM ON THE EXIT.'

'I've failed to find what I need.'

'ONCE THERE WAS A SORCERER WHO WANTED TO UNCOVER ALL MYSTERIES IN THE WORLD BUT IT DIDN'T END WELL.'

'This isn't curiosity. These scraps of knowledge are all I have to face the abomination…' My throat spasmed, and I doubled over coughing. 'The abomination who is stronger than the strongest of my friends. That is after our lives.'

'BE GRATEFUL THE THING THAT NEEDS YOU COULDN'T FIND YOU HERE.'

I sat up and slowly got back to my feet holding to the wall. The musky wind burned my face. A thread of glowing light was winding from under my boots out of the room. I ran along the pathway following the thin stream of the Lingering One's radiance. Corridors and rooms flashed by, howls and yells came from behind as the squall of hot wind was chasing me through the halls.

Soon human auras showed up in the current of dreams and visions. That was no realspace, a belated recollection popped up. Haywired, I reached for the closest pack of soul-lights and made a giant leap with closed eyes. I bumped into something hard and grabbed it with both hands so as not to fall down.

Gauntleted fingers touched my head. I looked up to see Imudon standing next to the entrance gateway, the rest of our group gathered around. My hands clasped on his vambrace, I staggered. Imudon wrapped his arm around my shoulder.

'Let's go. We feared we had lost you.'

'The hungry monster,' I started but Imudon shook his head and nodded aside. The Stray Cat was there, gripping his bolter so tight his gauntlet joints screeched. The wrath of his aura was laced with utter despair. The false Omegon leaned against a column as if it didn't bother him but startled when the side wall moved.

Cypher walked out of a hidden doorway. Only then I realized the Hrud were nowhere to be seen.

'The beast is lurking beyond the wall of fog waiting for us to leave the tower's safety,' he said. 'Even here, it can reach out to us through the breach left by one reckless man in the moment of his madness.'

I shrugged. 'The xenos have vanished.'

'They're already waiting in the ship to proceed further.'

Imudon stepped forward and gave me a light nudge. A strong wind blew from the depth of the chambers to our backs as if to swipe us out. A whirlwind of psychic images rushed through my mind, the Lingering One's quiet voice was whispering in the background but the words eluded my senses. Once we stepped on the bridge of sparkling light, it started melting behind with every step. Aphedron and Scalaria, their fingers intertwined, stopped in the middle of the bridge looking at the changing patterns of clouds until Ulchabhan overtook them.

A pit opened in the bottom of my stomach when I got too close to the edge. There was no falling to one's death outside of the material realm but the shimmering nothing beyond gave me vertigo.

Even bigger flocks of Umbrae swarmed the outside of the damaged room, a few followed us shifting colours of charcoal and pearl, shadow threads appeared from their spheric bodies and weaved into large intricate nets as they flew close to one another.

'Shan't we wait, sir?' I sent to Cypher.

'The beast has found us here though we eluded its grip last time. Turns out it has been stalking the crippled Fortress since that encounter like a predator following a wounded animal . It craves to be let inside to feast on the ship's heart.'

'Imudon told me even shrine shadows couldn't break through the Fortress' defenses.'

He shook his head. 'That doesn't mean it won't try. It can do great harm still, as well as kill us.'

'Will we be able to leave through the warp?'

'Only if the Shadow doesn't blind us'.

The Blackstone Fortress loomed anchored on the other end, so gigantic that half of it was lost to sight in the fog. For one last time I glimpsed back at the tower when I reached the lock-gate but the bridge under my feet dissolved with a flash. Dazzled, I staggered but suddenly found myself already in behind the sealed gate.

The Hrud were chirping in the distant end of the passage pointing up at the vaults. Cypher listened for them for a while, and no one dared to interfere. Even Fluffster. He hadn't uttered a word during the whole trip to the Tower of Memories, I realized. The man with the most puzzling and wonderful memories to recover there.

'Right to the central area without delay,' Cypher ordered. 'Every minute is vital.'

Cracks had appeared on the glossy surface of the vaults though this part of the Fortress had been shielded by the Lingering One's aura. That could only mean the beast had found a way to the ship's circuit. We could only hope it was true it couldn't undo the inner protective sigils. Fluffster climbed in first and started tapping on the control panel. I flopped back on my seat. The shuttles rushed through the passages at top speed.


	50. Episode 6 Chapter 7

Nets of cracks ran across crystal walls of galleries. Large sharp-edged splinters were stuck in the vault over the central pavilion. Lucky Beggar was loitering around the navigation platform, his golden face placid as before. He opened his arms on seeing us disembark the shuttles.

'They're unable to get to the place of memories but some shards have made it to the veil of protection,' he said. 'One stupidity causes another. First a few adventurers release the ancient curse…' He shrugged his shoulders to the Stray Cat's glare. 'Then the wittiest man ever born falls out of the window to the monster's call despite two Old Ones' efforts to keep him safe.'

Cypher pointed at the throne. 'Every psyker is needed here.'

As Scalaria was climbing the steps to the warpseer's place, I chose one of the lower seats. The Sea Lion and Ulchabhan both were leaders of our supporting choir. Non-psychic marines from Cypher's retinue retreated to the back exits of the pavilion, two sentries for every passage.

'All primarchs but one were known to have psychic powers,' the Stray Cat told 'Omegon' with a chuckle. 'In times of need the greatest commanders among Mankind are expected to take the lead.'

'My late brother was truly a psyker while I'm not, to the dismay of my legionnaires,' 'Omegon' mumbled back.

'He's right,' Cypher said all of a sudden. 'Our non-psychic crew will take care of the machinery. Hurry up before the Shadow is here.'

'It's drawing near.' Scalaria's voice trembled. 'Swallowing the light coming from the tower. Eager to devour the very memories of the halls as well as our minds.'

Sparks of warp energy cracked over the golden living metal. United auras chanted in unison with the choir of voices lingering in the giant ship's circuit. I breathed in and out with my eyes closed, reaching for them.

The distant chant grew louder. Their combined energy rolled over me like a sea tide. Afloat in the waves of aether, I concentrated on the formless dark on the very edge of my psychic sight. By my own, I could have hardly noticed it at all from such distance, but when reinforced by psykers of such power, I managed to take a peek at the outside through the circuit auspexes.

In the psyker-sight the cursed shards floating around the Fortress were blobs of primal darkness and clotted blood. Umbrae had broken through the field of splinters, their shadow-limbs weaving around the pieces to bind the power within. A feeble reek of musk and ambergris wafted from the darkness growing on the horizon.

Like a stormcloud drawing near, the Shadow unfurled, its pitch black getting even deeper. A hot wind was blowing in my face. Even the blazing souls of our choir faded a bit. The Fortress slipped through the fog wall and let the calm currents carry it. This time, both krakens and whales had vanished, probably scared away by the approaching apex predator of warp tides.

'The road leads to the vicinity of the Eye,' Cypher's voice said far far away in the realspace. 'Still safer.'

The wind turned into a fierce gale that threw me back. Whirwinds of smoke engulfed the hull of the Fortress all of a sudden. Choking musk stench brought tears to my eyes. Strange drowse overwhelmed my mind. Darkness wrapped around the soulfires hiding them from sight. Lost in stirring smoke, I lingered between the two worlds barely able to recall who and where I was. The buzz in the pit of my stomach was coming back, my bowels ached at a bout of maddening hunger.

Then the whole world shivered. A wave of searing blackness rushed over me. The last I saw falling into the abyss was the ship's radiant heart sparkling through the smoke uncounted miles away.

Pain squeezed my temples, and in a second the depth was devoid of its sentient hunger. Nothing but the blackest black remained. About to pass out, I still managed to hold on the edge. The warp waves rolled back letting me out to the Materium.

Numb muscles didn't obey me when I tried to get up from the seat with my eyes still closed.

'What a magic shell-shock it has been,' I whispered finally able to move my hands and clutch my heavy head.

'A null one,' Fluffster's undisturbed voice said from beneath. 'Thank the Emperor, one of the remaining emergency protocols was launched just in time when the Shadow overtook us.'

'Good luck is what everyone needs most of all, sage.' Lucky Beggar's gait now sounded shaky though the liveliness of his voice hadn't changed.

I rubbed my eyes to take a peek at the transparent pavilion roof. Whimsical warpscapes had given way to the black of the void now strewn with a hailstorm of shards dancing over us. Earlier, they had been smoked and dull but now sparks of scarlet that flashed inside had turned them into an unholy likeness of a firefly swarm.

The Stray Cat had frozen up against a column covering his eyes. As if catatonic, he kept on whispering,

'Within her Shadow… Within her Shadow…'

His mutter mixed with the chirping of the Hrud who had re-emerged from the bowels of the ship to fuss with the machinery. In the Serpent's proximity the surface of seer crystals got misty, ribbons of plasma that glowed over the tangles of wires made from living metal had a sinister reddish hue. Dawnspark with two other Hrud climbed the dais to Scalaria's throne where she curled up on the seat panting.

Ulchabhan leapt up from his seat and stretched his arms. 'The ship is too weak to fend off when the most horrible foe has overtaken us. Was I really meant to say farewell to my life long before I got a single clue to the secrets of life and death?'

Lucky Beggar sighed. 'The Great War didn't spare the Fortress. Though a greater war will be the end of it. Its days are counted already.'

'At least you're optimistic enough to think the end is not today,' growled the Sea Lion. He turned to false Omegon loitering around with a decrepit oversized bolter in his hands. 'As we've got a whole Primarch running around, what about a miracle of your kind? Like jumping out to space and tearing down the Serpent with your bare hands.'

'Omegon' pretended not to have heard the jape and leaned over a screen of psychoactive crystal as if to read Aeldari runes flickering over the surface.

There was a distant rumble, a dazzling flash of the screen made 'Omegon' mutter a cuss. Cypher raised his head from the machinery for the first time.

'Everyone but the Cat and the Sea Lion, to the north-western ray. Block the passage.'

As the sentry marines ran out with bolters at ready, Cypher reached for a crystal pillar connected to a row of screens with both golden cables and thin shining threads of warp energy. A cloud of light rose over the pillar and formed a holographic map of a long hallway. Shards the size of cutters had broken through the vault. One was stuck in the golden frame, three others stirred on the floor amid crystal rubble. Dirty smoke inside formed entire packs of theroid monsters who whirled and leapt writhing their limbs and tendrils. As soon as a few groups of mechanical guards parted from the walls, nets of cracks appeared on the surface of the shards. Warp-light lanterns went out one by one. Only violet lamp-eyes of the guards remained lit in the pitch dark.

The wave of growing Shadow swallowed the marines and rushed further through the passages extinguishing already blinking lights.

'Why have you sent them out?' I cried to Cypher as horror made me shiver. 'Let the guards fight for the Fortress.'

'What they witness there is way too important,' he said.

Guards swarmed the surrounding platforms. The suppressing aura of the Serpent barely let me breathe. As I tried to look out with my psyker-sight, burning pain seized me as if I plunged in fire. Ulchabhan doubled over pressing both hands to his helmet. Purple blood oozed from thin cracks that appeared on the wraithbone. I gasped for air. Then the darkness fell over.

In the last dim glow of crystal screens Fluffster was tapping on the still alive navigation machines surrounded by the silenced Hrud. Suddenly the whole hall shuddered from a violent blow from above. Fluffster gripped the wires but three Hrud rolled towards the edge of the platform. The second blow was tenfold as crushing. The seat belts that held me popped. Before I could move, the wall rushed towards me. Everything died out.

Headache. Pain in the whole body. Searing heat. My conscience slowly returning, I opened my eyes. Reddish unlight was streaming into the navigation hall through a giant breach in the vault. Right above, a nightmarish flesh-ship was lingering over us like a blood moon. Similar to the Macan Kumbang in her worst days but the size of a craftworld, it was crawling closer, growing against the black of the void. Packs of giant shards orbited it like vessel escorts. The air was swishing out carrying away broken machinery pieces but the shards were floating in despite all laws of physics. My gaze fixed on the scarlet moon of flesh, I didn't have strength to even check my injuries let alone get up.

A dark shape leaned over me.

'Volentia, don't move,' I heard Imudon's voice. 'Until I pull out the splinters.'

Only then I raised my head and saw sharp pieces of crumbled vault scattered all around. A few were stuck in my carapace and my shoulder right under the pauldron piece. Imudon touched my arms and legs. I flinched.

'No broken bones or dislocations,' he said. 'A few concussions and a stretched sinew. Hold my hand to get up.'

I finally forced myself to turn away from the sinister orb. 'Thanks. What's up with the folks?'

'Our psykers have got a thrashing. Cypher and Crinitus managed to keep the main terminals intact though. I'd advise you to return to your seat.'

'The air…' I started with a sigh.

'There's enough to let us hold on during the repairs.'

I stepped on my injured leg and staggered. Something what I had mistaken for a collapsed terminal moved by my side.

'In old days, Primarchs could hold Titans above ground,' said Imudon.

'Up yours,' false Omegon's voice screeched back, distorted by the damaged helmet speakers. He tore off his mauled helmet and got up. Parts of his broken armour suit slipped off his shoulders and rattled against the floor.

His true height turned out to be shorter than Imudon's. His confused face looked youthly with plump cheeks not yet marked by battle scars.

'A scout,' Imudon hummed. 'No surprise you were clumsy like hell in your suit. The one lovingly made by the Gorgon during the Great Crusade, a hundred generations away from you.'

Imudon led me back to my seat, swept off a few splinters and started untangling torn cables while I was tying the ends of the belts together, my flashlight secured over my head in a knot of wires. The scout came closer and crossed his arms on his chest.

'Up yours, old bastard,' he repeated. 'This pile of metal rubbish didn't let me starve. After the Alpha cadre had been wiped away after a genestealer riot. I wouldn't have minded if that happened just a couple months later when I had already got my Black Carapace.'

'There are warbands aplenty,' the recovering Stray Cat wheezed out from the dark.

'Not in a nook of the Galaxy as poor as this one. Aye, I got a job proposition one day. From a gang of Nurglites ridden by the runs. Enjoying their runs, I'd say.'

'They'd have cured you from the word runs instead,' said Imudon.

'Silence!' Cypher bellowed. 'We don't have time for these petty quarrels! Psykers, get ready to concentrate at your best!'

His next words drowned in a sudden blast. A pack of spindle drones who were repairing the breach fell down to the platform one by one. A small whirlpool of smoke burst in whirling and growing amid dancing splinters. Limbs of shadow reached for crystal pillars above Scalaria's throne.

The drones ran up the walls. Beams of purple warp energy clashed with torrents of red unlight that formed a twisting halo around the smoky monster. Now it was a beast alike to those on the golden gates of the Casbah and the abandoned canyon fane. Its shape shifted from a leaping, slender lictor to a brute of a carnifex, back and forth as it spun around within the Shadow made even deeper by the glow of the Serpent. The orb of flesh hung right over us, more tendrils of smoke weaving towards the Fortress. The drones that got too close to the monster melted into pools of silvery necrodermis and fused with the walls and columns to re-emerge later.

'They respawn slower than it dissolves them,' the Alpha scout cried out struggling with his jammed old bolter.

Imudon and the Stray Cat fired on and on to shoot off tendrils that brushed against the throne machinery despite the resistance of the drones. Even if the monster cannot vanquish the ship, the ship's spirit would hardly mind the deaths of a few alien rogues, I recalled what I had heard earlier. What if the hungry moon can swallow the Fortress whole and lock it within her bowels forever? The Macan Kumbang had maws in the place of its airlocks like Tyranid giant bio-vessels.

Lucky Beggar strolled up and down the platform stairways. He shooed the swirling splinters like evening mosquitoes, and they fell down to the floor at the swipes of his hand as he passed by.

'Psykers, ready?' Cypher shouted again through the battle noise. 'The Hrud have turned on one of the big cannons.'

Psychic energy ran sparkling through the wires. I jumped on my seat as it pierced my mind and body. Ulchabhan gasped and spat out a blood clot through a big crack on his visor.

'Connect!' the next command hit my aching ears.

'Scalaria might die!' Aphedron shouted from his seat.

'We all might die,' Cypher said in a lower voice. 'Connect!'

Lucky Beggar stopped and smiled. 'We will be lucky today. We will. The Fortress is yet to fulfill its purpose.'

I covered my face with both hands and breathed in. Interrupted by smoke whiffs, a shining energy stream flowed towards a kindling fire next to the ship's blazing heart. I rushed through the musky mist, repeating litanies of protection. The Shadow turned into viscous mud that poured over my limbs, my eyes, and every move seemed to last for minutes and hours. Pools of mud boiled all around, geysers sent jets of steaming black tar to the misty skies of the warpscape. The Fortress's protective constructs didn't let the Shadow cut us off from the Immaterium completely but even our strongest psykers' souls glowed much dimmer. In the distance there were three flames moving towards the stream, Aphedron's light, though not that strong, still followed them without delay.

Headache and fatigue brought tears to my eyes, my lungs got sore and dry in the eerie heat. After an eternity of struggles, the thin beam of my own soul-light joined in. The growing calm might of the psychic radiant overpowered the Shadow that pulled me back. Once I stepped into the stream, traces of tar and mud on my feet vanished. The radiant reminded me of the cannon in the watch-tower of Ulthwë but so was its might that it could probably take out a Gloriana battleship with a single salvo. The power of a blazing sun locked within the ancient crystal was almost ready to break out into a firestorm.

'Aim!' Cypher commanded from beyond.

The fire craved to be let out. It boiled within shining like molten metal. As we gathered around it, Ulchabhan's psychic form reached for it pulling a thin white-hot thread of light out of the crystal.

And there it raged over us, the blackest of black holes with a fire hidden deep within that was hotter and fiercer than any of mortal-made weapons. A cloud of splinters swirling at dizzy speed rushed against us to clash with the torrent of psychic light .

'Charge!'

I breathed out with a throat-splitting cry. A psychic ripple ran over us as our salvo hit the Serpent's underbelly through the field of splinters that cracked and burned. Then all that was left was a beastly howl of the wounded Serpent.

Nearly oblivious, I tore on the belts and threw myself forward. The noise died out. Sitting on the floor, I finally relaxed in a sudden calm. Far above, the drones had nearly repaired the breach. The Serpent was still there flickering but the Shadow's grip had loosened. The marines stood against the wall still with bolters in hands. All that reminded of the smoke monster's presence were last dirty puffs melting away in the light of warp-lamps turning on one by one.

The golden sleek shape of Lucky Beggar was gleaming even brighter against the dark of the crystal wall. He clapped his hands. 'I've told you we'll be lucky today. A glorious shot. Glorious indeed.'

'Too early, Volentia, too early,' Fluffster said to me from behind the control panel. 'We're yet to escape.'

I looked up to the navigation throne where Scalaria had doubled over. The mask slipped down to her chin, and tears of blood were smeared over her cheeks. Aphedron was already standing over her, trying to rekindle her soul-light nearly extinguished by the Serpent's backlash. He turned to Fluffster and clenched his gauntlet.

'She won't be able to make it out alive.'

'She's an astropath,' Fluffster growled back. 'No one else here can find the only safe roadway out. We're in the Eye Halo.'

'Radiant Worlds,' Imudon said more to himself. 'She won't follow.'

He meant the Serpent, I guessed. And probably the entity that waited for reckless travellers in the heart of the Casbah. That had made Glyceris lose his mind and had doomed the Stray Cat's ship and career. I hadn't heard much about the Radiant Worlds but knew that rogue traders called them the only harbour for those trapped in the Eye. The light of the Astronomican had flooded those planets, called the Firetide by the denizens of the Eye, and Chaos daemons were burned by the Emperor's radiance if they dared to approach the place.

'She tried to devour the light once,' said Lucky Beggar. 'Yet it seared her very heart.'

Aphedron lowered to one knee beside the throne cradling Scalaria in his arms.

'Quicker, Magnificent,' said Fluffster. 'You've got a stim-pack on your belt.'

'Enough wallowing,' the Sea Lion grunted from his place in a voice weak and hoarse. 'We might survive the escape but not another shot.'

Aphedron shook his head but reached for the pouch on his belt. Scalaria shuddered and gave out a muffled cry as the stim cocktail ran through her veins. Blood gushed from her nostrils and mouth. Aphedron smoothed her tangled hair and sat her back on the throne.

Ulchabhan took off the helmet that was about to fall apart. His long face was pasty white but with a feverish purplish blush on his cheeks. Dried blood covered his mouth and chin. Warp exposure had worn out his armour so that its colour had changed from bright red to faded maroon, its smooth surface now looked chipped and battered.

'You were taught to find the Astronomican in the warp, girl,' Fluffster said to slowly awakening Scalaria. 'Head where it's the strongest, and the Fortress will follow.'

I stretched my numb arms and legs despite the dull pain in the injured ankle and got up holding to the seat. As the Shadow had retreated for a while, the new plunge into the warp with the choir wasn't as hard as before. Background noise was suppressed by the Fortress's aura, the musk stench was wearing out. Still the fog barred my view, and I only tried to keep in touch with the brighter souls of the others.

First, there was but mist. Then a distant, barely audible voice broke through the buzz. Sweet and clear, it grew louder, and more joined the chant. Rays of warm white light pierced the fog. It started melting as we strived to the faraway source of the light. Calm enveloped us. As if a net holding me had popped, and I threw myself into the coming tide of warmth. It was His gaze. His power that warded off even that most terrible of foes.

All but the Astronomican's radiance was gone. My soul's voice joined in with the heavenly chant, and I wished nothing but to stay forever in the bliss of His presence.

Suddenly, a hand touched my shoulder. Sounds from the world left far behind mixed in. The Light faded, replaced by the same navigation pavilion that now looked almost as undisturbed as when we had entered it. At the entrance I saw the sentries who had returned from the passages to their positions. Their suits were broken and bloody but they stood as firm as before listening to Cypher's speech in an unknown language.

Aphedron walked down past me with unconscious Scalaria in his arms. Fluffster went out from behind and smiled.

'We're on our way, Volentia. Don't be too sad to leave the Radiance. We'll have weeks to contemplate His Light on the Heart's Song.'


	51. Episode 6 - Epilogue

Epilogue

The small bonfire burned bright despite the blizzard that raged and whirled outside in the dark. Once in a while, a gust of cold gale swept through the cave, and the boy pressed to the warmth of the wolf mother's shaggy side. He sensed the Hunter's return even before the tall man entered the cave and sat down at the fireside.

He never smells of cold, thought the boy. Carved evergreen leaves on his helmet and cloak are warm and fresh unlike those bitten by frost in the woods. The Hunter's helmet adorned with elk horns had been the first the boy had seen when he had opened his eyes in the snow. The Hunter had taken him here, to the wolf mother's pack, had told him about snow and rocks, trees and beasts. Sometimes, sparks of a different life far away awakened in the boy's mind, and day by day he ventured further into the forest trying to find any clues.

He crawled out from under his snoring wolf brothers and sat next to the Hunter looking into the fire. 'There are others like me, father. I dreamed of a boy lost in the middle of another forest, dark and foul. Another one was standing on top of a sparkling rock, and the wind was hot as a hundred bonfires. I went past the white rivers at sunset at last. To find those villages you told me about one day. The furthest I've reached but there was nobody around.'

'Wait for a bit more,' said the Hunter. He was often wistful at night, pondering in the dancing fire glints. 'But remember, the Erlking goes out when it's dark. His dead beasts and tainted servants lurk here when the sun leaves the sky until daybreak. They were circling you when I found you. He craves for your warm blood and the power within your soul.'

'I'm a wolf,' the boy said. 'I'm not afraid of the Erlking. Today, I saw his long shadow between withered trees when I ran back. But he didn't follow me.'

´He hates the fire I've kindled here. His chill killed or expelled the refugees who had fled from the coming Fall of their Empire. Yet he cannot extinguish the spark of my power they had brought with themselves. Once, the old forest was warm and green, and Mother's roses bloomed where she stepped on the grass.'

'Let her come back.'

'She's far away, a prisoner in the realm of Plague.'

'One day, when I grow up, I'll find her and set her free.' The boy picked up a fresh leaf that had fallen to the floor from the Hunter's cape. 'Why don't you drive the frost away if the Erlking can't beat you?'

The Hunter looked at the boy, his eyes sadder than on any day before. 'What you see is just a spark. I'm also further, much further than you think.'

Puzzled, the boy shrugged. 'Will you show me where the others are?'

'Wait,' the Hunter repeated. 'Soon, they will find you. I'll warn you on the day I have to leave you.'

The boy wrapped in his own cape of leaves, the Hunter's gift. 'Don't leave forever, father.'

'A man will raise you as his son until your true Father comes.'

'What about you then?'

The Hunter smiled. 'Even far from here, you'll hear my voice. The one shamans of distant hamlets call the Voice of Fenris.'


	52. Episode 7 - Gulled

Prologue

On top of the black tower that rose to the nine suns of Sortiarius, far above the cursed desert and surreal dwellings of Prospero's lost children, the Crimson King sat staring into the waves of aether. Here, where time and space were absent, his faces and minds shifted at the whim of the warp. From a bedridden boy finding refuge in his dreams to a king who reveled in madness and wisdom. Images of everything and nothing fleeted by, and he admired their whimsical changes unlike any in the boring material realm. Uncolours, unshapes, unpatterns.

A faint golden glow lit up through the flow of visions. Human presence. Not a simple mortal stranger. It was the radiance of all his brothers' souls that stayed there even after the transformations.

His preacher brother, clad in crimson armour, stepped on the platform pavement out of nowhere. The King flinched against his will when he looked at the runes inscribed on the armour.

'Lorgar,' the King said without bothering about greetings, 'could you have made a less pitiful face for the visit?'

'Rumours of your madness have saddened me deeply, dear brother,' said Lorgar with tears in his eyes. Mock or not, the King couldn't tell even with all his newfound wisdom. 'When I last came to you, you nearly destroyed me in a playful bout of antics.'

'Still I barely feel like following our dashing Warmaster to Terra. What a sight, this ocean of the most exquisite nonsense!'

Lorgar sighed at the King's laughter. 'What else to do if we finally dared to raise our weapons against our Father's power? I used to think He deserved worship most of all but since, I've witnessed too many great powers here and beyond.'

The King didn't listen. He stared into the warp tide, trying to catch an ancient memory that had just emerged to pester him.

'It was night on Prospero,' he said addressing no one. 'One of those nights when countless stars light up over the dark of groves and canyons. When everything fell asleep, I walked away from the spires and pyramids to the Newcomer's call. He was a stranger to Prospero but I had recognized Him on the moment He had set foot on the planet.'

Lorgar froze up. His aether-wrought shape fluttered in the wind.

'I saw His human shape. I saw His mind concealed from many without the psyker gift. But there was something more I tried to uncover. I asked Him questions, and He told me about the warp, about things of past and present. No matter how hard I tried to gaze deeper, I failed. On that night, it was quiet and dark when He lit a bonfire under the stars.' The King was silent for a while, his face distorted as if the memories gave him pain. 'As we talked on, He noticed what I strived to hide. There were things that could dazzle even the sharpest minds, He said. I argued with Him with all my youth's fervour. I wanted to know everything, and I want that still, above all.'

Lorgar blinked and wiped his eyes. 'He has never been fair to His sons.'

'He was, on that night. Take a look, if you insist, He said. But keep it to yourself until due time, He asked me. Full of joy, I gazed with my mind-sight further than ever before and ever after. Beyond the distant stars no mortal will ever reach. Beyond the borders of the material realm where it intertwines with the Ocean of Souls. Beyond the alien tides of the warp. Beyond the shining darkness when I finally pierced the cloud of unknowing.'

'And then?' Lorgar whispered.

'And I collapsed in awe and terror.' Where the King had sat, a dishevelled boy curled up weeping.

When Lorgar opened his eyes back in his cell on Colchis, tears were running down his face.


End file.
